The Men of Twilight: Twilight TwentyFive
by goldenmeadow
Summary: Stories written to one-word prompts for the Twi 25 contest. Peek inside the minds of Edward, Jasper, Carlisle, Peter and more. Both AU & Canon in settings and pairings. Love, lust, loss, larking. Each story rated separately. DIVE IN!
1. Raindrops

**The following twenty-five pieces of writing are my entries for The Twilight Twenty-Five contest, hosted by queenofgrey on LiveJournal. Either oneshots or drabbles (100-word pieces),these bits will stand alone although for thematic purposes, my aim is that they will all be AU, from male POV, and will be each be set up in the same manner. Unless I am an utter failure, I will have completed these by December 1****st****. For more information please visit: thetwilight25(dot)livejournal(dot)com**

**So, sit back and enjoy the show; and don't forget to leave love.**

**V, thank you hon for walking this crazy-ass road with me.**

**Disclaimer: Twilight, hers. This, mine.**

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****The Twilight Twenty-Five****  
**Prompt: 14. Raindrops  
Pen name: goldenmeadow

Pairing: Peter/Charlotte  
Rating: M (mature themes and violence)

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**Circa 1875**

**Louisiana**

**Peter**

My mother died during childbirth, a common enough occurrence. Life hung in the balance between marauders and disease and feuds. I liked to think that my father had been a good, kind, gentle man before he was widowed and left saddled with me, a squalling infant.

I knew that was not the truth.

A poacher, a vagrant, he stole and we ran. I became fast on my feet, more able to rapidly dodge his brawny fist that wanted to pummel me for some feigned transgression or other.

A wanted man, my sire was a hangman's noose about my throat. Drunk on pigswill, violent, he would take the strap of his worn belt to me, sometimes even the bitten metal of the buckle. Like a cat-o-nine tails, whipping me for nothing more than smiling at the wrong time, running in the wrong direction, or failing to procure enough drink to keep him inured.

After one too many beatings I fled. At the age of fifteen, I was wiser than most adults, and much more wary. A runaway. Sometimes a riverboat-stowaway. A vagabond.

Following food and the work of itinerants, the harvests of cotton and tobacco, I survived but did not live beyond the search for food, shelter, and clothing. That which was every person's right, I pursued basic needs, giving no thought that happiness could be mine.

I was the ripe age of seventeen when I had my first woman. Vestigial escapism, hours of splendid forgetfulness. She was the first in a succession of legs and breasts and lashings of long hair; guileless women that I loved with my body but never my heart. To my surprise I found that I beguiled them with my compact form, my hardened, well-worked physique, my sad smile, black hair, doleful, dark eyes, and somnolent demeanor.

Working across the southern states, I bedded down wherever there was shelter. On a broiling frosty autumn night that stewed up a storm, I hunkered beneath a cavern of yew just off an un-walked dirt path. Driving-cold jags of rain made sloppy mud of the ground I was trying to sleep upon. Exhausted to such a degree that even the wet suck of the boggy soil could not stave off slumber, I drifted in and out fitfully.

I felt the pressure of a blow, but more gentle, tapping the underside of my chin. Still asleep, I swatted the interloper. Peering through encrusted eyes, I watched as a hard, narrow, black, kid-leather toe nudged me, this time with more force than was necessary.

Sitting up slowly, I shook drops of wet from my head and eyes that matched the scum I'd slumbered upon. There were four of them. Fashioned in a semicircle before me, one man and three women of ethereal beauty. Certain I was still dreaming, or dead, I closed my eyes and sighed. A hectic laugh that sounded real roped my sight to the smallest woman; a dark sensual thing with inky tendrils and the fairest skin. Vague coils of fear caressed me. I had heard tales of night creatures that wore the skin of humans as gloriously glowing habile, but believed them to be nothing more than nightmarish fairy-tales of enchantment and sirens and the bogeyman.

The man looked anything but a bogeyman. Clean and crisp and stunningly light like a pearl, gold like coinage, tall and straight as a tree but withholding the might of a copse, he chuckled with brevity and grinned, showing teeth that were weapons in their own right.

Each dreadfully uneasy anecdote was true.

Nettie, Lucy, Maria, and Jasper. I expected him to be their leader, I could not have been more wrong. Taking point, the smallest woman who looked little more a girl on the cusp of womanhood stepped forward, lifted me up off the sepulcher of ground with just one finger taking the place of her boot beneath my chin.

Strange waves of calm rippled over me even while she licked the juicy plumes of her darkest lips and intoned in a hypnotizing, musical Spanish accent that spoke of love even while it smelled of death, a chiming bell, a death knell tolling, "_Mi amore,_ this is going to hurt you more than it is going to hurt me."

With galling ease she winked at me before sinking edgy teeth through the buttercream of my neck. I watched it all with horror, apart from my body that shook and writhed, then twined into hers, coupling with her, deliriously enamored with the crawl of her gnawing mouth that sucked from my throat to my shoulders, my torso, and to my belly. Splattered to the earth, my body opened to hers, and I welcomed this feeling of homecoming! Teeth grazing and hips sliding, nudging, swiveling, I was inside of her just as her toxin was melting through the human marrow of my bones.

Bawling with crimson ecstasy, I saw myself jerking beneath her; all death and climax.

Usurper.

_~~ll~~_

We worked together, Jasper and I, for Maria. Her golden boy with his Midas touch; I believed he could do no wrong. At first standoffish, completely a warrior, at length Jasper loosened in my presence and I saw the humane compassionate heart that must have been his--when it had still existed. Out of cunning and necessity, I latched onto Jasper in the beginning. And through the nightly annihilation as we created bloodthirsty howling newborn armies, a most strange thing happened. I found disparate friendship.

Years went on in this manner. A vampire, the only thing that had really changed from my _life _was that I did not age, that I welcomed the genetic call to violence instead of heading it off; that I drank from running veins like a fiend. A hateful, haunted, hurting creature, but not so very different. The black had always been inside of me, a gift from my father's vile nature.

Bleak and stark, at a standstill, more vengeful than ever with the hot red liquid of blood and gore crazing my mind, I tore off and tracked down my father. Prowled and watched him. Scabby, dirty, rotten, disease-ridden and still spiteful, he made my teeth itch. Waiting until he was good and liquored up, I teased and tested and toyed with him; my speed making such diabolical jest an easy thing. Knocking over stools, hissing in his ear, tearing off his shoddy mangy blanket, slamming the door and making the windows of his stolen cabin rattle, I gloried in his discomfort.

Before I ripped his head from his decaying body, I made him know me. Sat in the last chair, by the dying fire, all coal and smoke fleeing, devilry written all over me.

The smile on my face was a rightful thing, once he said my name. _"Peter!"_

Knocking him back, I killed him outright and sent my father into hell. I didn't feel the slightest bit of yearning for his blood, the smell of it was rotten and nauseating and like the fetid insides of an abattoir. I'd had it running through my veins for nineteen unmentionable years, and now I would be nineteen forever. With no father, and only Maria as my mother; Jasper my brother. Nettie and Lucy my ill-fated sisters.

When I returned to the coven, Maria smiled pleasantly and asked knowingly, "Did you enjoy your little sojourn?" Not waiting for my answer, she pulled me down to her face, a thing of seraph's that ran with demons, "If you ever leave again I will make piecemeal of you, beyond all rising and reparation and recognition. Now, you've got work to do."

Her threat was not idle; she had done some unmentionable things to Jasper in my absence because of my shirking of duties. And he bore it all with the most majestic air and pride. Maria was an able queen, a formidable, fear-provoking tyrant, but interspersed with the hourly claims of aggression she held us all in thrall with enough moments of corporeal love that kept us needy for her approval, and her sex that was a hot, wild, connubial thing.

Embroiled in my dam's hellish handiwork, I worked doubly hard to regain my standing; brutal and cruel, I felt less and less.

With an infant battalion in need of being dispatched, having lost their verve and fervor after only one year of non-stop pillaging, Jasper and I divided the carnage between us. The gentler of us, he always volunteered to kill the more skittish. And we never discussed the night's slaughter. With fifty or more dismembered bodies piled into cold smoking pyres in the spring meadow, I looked around for the last one.

It was near midnight, though time had long since lost its meaning and essence. The waxy moon larked in and out of frail dampening clouds that became more and more solid with each passing minute. Loping around the metallic charcoal of vampire body parts, warily stepping over limbs and skulls and hands and digits, I kicked the last little bits into the flames and watched the instantaneous combustion with a feeling of pride couple with complete disgust and wretchedness. Had I any bile, I would have vomited at my own unending spiral into gloominess and butchery; horrified that I had become a monster that took conceit over such repulsive deeds!

Sensing the onslaught of my despair, Jasper found me glaring through the haze and into the gloam. Silently he clasped his hand to my shoulder, hooked my crimson-black eyes with his own, and I wondered at the wordless sympathy therein. _How could he be this? How could we continue?_

With my questioning, as if understanding much more than I ever could, Jasper clapped me on the back and shoved me towards the middle of the field, a platinum sea of sleeping blooms. The slightest of smiles lifted his lips into a fashioning that looked like the first honest smile I had ever known.

And I wondered at its cause, on a night such as this.

Sudden rain came down like the filmy muslin drapes I had seen, as a young human man, filtering in and out on a summer breeze in the bedchamber of a plantation manse. When the mistress of the house had come upon me in her fields, back aching and thighs, arms, forehead sweating under the midday sun, she had run her plump soft white hand over my forearm, gathering the dew. Smiling, she bade me follow her. Up the portico, tripping along the tall oaken steps at her behest, life even then had felt supernatural. A small, hot bath had been sitting beside the crackling fire. Disrobing quietly, she allowed me to watch.

Warm and lush and lovely, happy and needing me to satisfy her, the missus laid back into the plush depths of perfumed water, smiled so beatifically and uttered so sweetly that my knees nearly gave out, "Young man, you are in need of a washing. Allow me to do the honors."

Intensely hungry for comfort, I had flung my dirty clothes off to her charming peals of laughter before her eyes to my erect cock silenced all further teasing. Easing into the perfect liquid, I faced her, reclined between her legs, her small feet digging into my buttocks. She had taken the utmost care with silky cloth and clover honey soap, bathing each part of me.

Ducking my head under the water to rinse my hair, she pulled me back up so that my lips were flush with her dangling, swollen nipples. Hungrily lapping and sucking, I took her teats as I settled her flush against me, fully onto me, completely over me, wetly seated inside of me.

With wanton peace, perfect tightness, enormous contentment, she worked up and down me, arching back and throwing her tits more fully into my face! Cupping the globes of her bottom in my hand, I took over the pace. My neck was laid back over the rim of the tub, my stomach scraped by her fingernails that clawed into the sprout of clandestine hair that led to my hardness moving so slowly in and out of her.

Simplicity and sensuality. The wet of the water made fast work of her taut recesses and I grew, swelled, lengthened, feeling the rubbing ridges inside of her stoking the velvet underside, topside and masthead of my dick. Pulling out one more time, I held her above my cock and watched as I throbbed, purple and huge and aching, and she swiveled her hips with a moan, "Please, now!"

Understanding a command, a plea, when it came to me, I pushed her down and thrust up as water sloshed the floorboards and she thrashed while I groaned and crushed her waist! Quick jerks and hard mumbles and her hands flew out behind her to hold the edge of the tub while I came to my knees and finished us with quick, jousting lunges.

Coming endlessly, biting her nipples, and sinking my harmless teeth into her throat, hers was the first neck I had tasted.

Sinking back into the water, replete and finished, she had wiped the discharge from my shaft, kissed me lingeringly, hotly, on my mouth, and dismissed me with a sigh.

Now, in this field, everything I had felt before was flimsy, ethereal, and unreal.

Nocturnal batwings and tonight's memories of dying children turned into hungering creatures bawling in their death. The pelting rain over my face and running down my body called me back this instant.

I found the last one exactly where Jasper had directed me.

All color was leeched by the monochromatic curtain of night. The young woman…_vibrant_. Only in the heaven's gates opening to thunderous gales, she was a luminescent butterfly. A maiden of mist, this was the first time I noticed her, understood her, felt her. And now I had to kill her.

Capering near the edges of the forest, she was like a sylvan sprite set free on a wild night, instead of one about to meet her maker for the second time.

Gaining ground at a more human speed, I came within her gamboling circle. The sleet gathered force and became a straight, driving sheet. Instead of dampening her, it twinkled and set off sparks of lightning over her skin. Flesh that looked fragile for all its metallic properties.

_How had I not noticed her before?_

Frolicking to the noise of the storm that thundered around us, like a firefly, she grinned at me and danced ever closer. A hum of electricity filled the atmosphere, and it was not from the charged tempest of the skies.

I knew that if I didn't kill her, with compassion, Maria would do so, with viciousness.

_A laugh like a warm bath, fresh, new…how could she be like this with all that we did?_

_How did I miss her? Twelve months, twelve wasted months!_

Alchemical infusion and meddlesome need. There was a bonfire behind me waiting for her body, sizzling as cold drops of rain splattered burning skeletons. It tickled my back with its sultry heat. The woman before me, still a few feet away from me, scratched my chest and groin with her insouciance.

Curt and impatient, I didn't know what to say. And I wondered why I felt the need to speak at all. _I don't even know her name. _

I beseeched her to stay still, to make it painless for her, easier on myself.

As if called to my wayward thoughts, she stopped momentarily. Bringing one hand to my torso, just over the empty grotto where my heart would be, she leant up and whispered against the corner of my mouth, "I'm Charlotte."

Her breath was like a ghost ship upon ravenous waves, and I was dumbfounded. As if by rote I heard myself responding, "My name is Peter, miss."

Her scant touch was soft as the goose down ticking of a mattress that I had always dreamed of bedding down upon as a wandering, hopeless, beaten child. At once calming like a mother, and thrilling like a lover.

The gossamer mist clung to the fine weave of her shift that simpered over the slim curves of her body. I saw her, finally, wholly. And what I felt was glorious, and unholy!

I was shaken. Still her lips lingered too close to my own, so near that I could almost taste the velvet of dewdrops and the earthy forest scent that wrapped her up like a shawl. _Charlotte._

Stepping back, I looked askance at the spitting fire.

_I cannot kill her._

Her goddess' flesh was made of silver fine hairs and spun silk, a creation of heavenly raiment that glowed with the misting of rain falling down, the shudders of the moon above.

_I need her to live._

With irises torrid as the lanterns of hell about to be extinguished, but laughing, they echoed her full throaty voice, "Peter, it's a pleasure to meet you, even if you're going to be the death of me."

I faltered; halted, hated…more than anything, so clearly, I felt a tear in the fabric of time. Saw the world as it could be. Stepping back, startled…_I love her. _

"I cannot kill you," for all the cresting emotions filling me up, my voice came out an empty casket of hurt. As surely this would be the end of both Charlotte and me.

Milk thistle skin, pussy willow wild hair, lavender lips, the smallest waist and pears for hips, valleys of skin topped by beautiful hills for breasts with nipples cooled, warmed by my wanton searching, searing, wondering, wandering eyes; _Could I have Charlotte?_

Smug, coy, sensual, and charmed, her steamy voice was muggy as she pulsed closer again, one leg between both of mine and her hands locking around the base of my spine that had become tall with the posture of a soldier, "I'm already dead, Peter. I know what to expect."

Even on the brink of demise, standing at the precipice of a blistering chasm, Charlotte's bright black and red eyes twinkled with flirtatious intent and her hips rolled into mine, feeling me hard, allowing me to know her wet.

Touching her for the first time, over her round shoulders, behind her back, between her breasts and down her belly, I felt like I was sinking into quilts of human lore, past our future and expectations.

_Home._

"I need you to live," knowing that I myself would not, as soon as Maria discovered my treason.

With her palm to my cheek, I finally felt skin that was…_mine._ Peaked lips found my own and I lifted Charlotte higher against me, tighter to me, as our mouths sucked, rubbed, outlined, and sighed before gasps overtook us, and our bodies twisted in immediate frenzy.

Her tongue touched mine and I cried out, "NO!"

_YES!_

Battling kisses with brash breaths and whimpers that were mere words, meaning everything and nothing, Charlotte stilled. Sensing her end.

Jasper was close.

Soothing in my ear so that I trembled and raised her higher onto my hips and over my clothed cock, she stated, "I will not live without you, Peter."

Soaked through, we felt none of the cold. Only pure, baking intensity. Setting Charlotte aside, holding onto her hand and fondling the small creases between her fingers, I faced my friend, my executioner.

Jasper.

_Finality._

Stance relaxed, halting two paces away, granting us respite and time, Jasper smiled that wise thing again.

I pulled Charlotte behind my back, bracketing her, shielding her. I would kill _him_ for _her_.

A large grin spilled onto Jasper's face and his eyes danced a subdued buttery bullion that was unknown to me. Shaking his head, he held his hands out in surrender and supplication and…._jest?_

Cautiously, he approached. Reached for Charlotte. And I surrendered her, brought to bear under Jasper's working of emotions.

Curling her into his side, she was shivering and slight, bold and fierce. Silver to his gold.

With those wide lips to her ear, Jasper whispered so lowly to her that even I could not hear. I feared the worst. My fists curled into talons for weapons of battle.

Her nod was succinct. Her eyes flew to me and amplified. Her lips parted and breathed yet.

_Yes._

I heard it and felt it and knew it to be the truth.

_Yes._

Releasing my woman, tapping her gently in my direction, Jasper nodded to me. Turning on his heel, the man sauntered away, whistling a battle anthem under his breath.

Charlotte was in my arms! A feather pillow, fragrances of life!

Jasper looked back just once, when he reached the nearest blaze and poked at it to set the flames higher, as if a new body had been added. His voice was willow-wisps of wisdom, succor and release, floating to me over time that began to roar finally, again, "Go. I will take care of Maria."

Uncanny, sly, my brother-at-arms, Jasper doffed his hat and I met his eyes with gratitude that could never be fulfilled.

"Peter, we must run!" Charlotte jumped down to her feet and, holding my hand firm, ran into the sheltering bracken that edged the forest.

_My love._

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**You know where I am, you know what I write. You don't have to review (heck yeah, I'm a huge liar!) though that would be nice!**

**Check out the other stories on LJ.**

**At the very least, give it up to Jes (queenofgrey) for this contest and all of her hard work. Seriously, this is an immense thing for one person to pull off. I doff my own hat to her. **


	2. Heart

**The Twilight Twenty-Five****  
**Prompt: 6. Heart

Pen name: goldenmeadow

Pairing: Edward/Bella  
Rating: M (mature themes and violence)

**V, cheers my love!**

**Disclaimer: SM owns Twilight, okay?**

*****WARNING!! This is OOC, AU, and really quite dark*****

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**Heart**

**Circa 2006**

**Forks, Washington**

**Edward**

Laid out upon the monstrosity of our bed, lit by the shanking roundness of the moon through my windows, Bella was naked.

Waiting.

I had promised her this, to take her life, in fair trade.

Bile rose from out of nowhere and commingled with venom, my teeth like whetstone against liquid and the blades sharpening with want.

If I was able to see within the bone confines of her sternum, I would have watched her heart pulsating. Deep alizarin, lusty pulp. Calling to mind her scorching sex in the throes of climax that she brought herself to when she believed I was away or simply unawares.

_Silly Bella._

Smelling the twining tincture of excited blood and thrilled sex, I stood just inside the bedroom door and wiped a sliver of drool from my lips that hardened from cushions to crystal.

Crusty with passion, my nose flared to her fragrance, my mouth curled into a tense smirk.

_Thump, thump, thump._

Catching sight of me, bare hard and bold, languishing and enjoying the replenishing vision of her tits, _exposed_, her legs, _opening_, her neck, _contracting_, Bella reached out and breathed, "Edward, I'm ready."

_Are you, Bella? Are you really?_

I couldn't quell the venom that dripped like a copperhead's bite from my incisors at the feast that was almost in my mouth.

Unable to deflate the rigid stiffness of my cock that would know, at the same time, her pussy sliding over me, I beat the wall with the side of my fist and was glad that only Carlisle remained in the Cullen manse.

Striding to the bed, my cock bobbing against air, I was going to touch her sweet, fresh body inside and out.

_Thud, thud, thud._

Bella had been asking for this since she first learned of my immortality, my static physical being. She wanted to remain the same age as me, was disgusted by the idea of growing old, becoming a wrinkled old doddering, blue rinsed, hard-of-hearing geriatric.

On one hand, I thought it was pure vanity; but on the other, the vision of Bella smelling stale and stinking of incontinence with cataracts dimming her eyes did not much appeal to me either.

Disregarding thoughts of a long, drawn-out future with her, I denied her every request – _after all, an eternity was an awfully long time to spend with one person _-- until the shrewd vixen came up with a transaction to torment my young, and very virile, body.

A master of control, I knew I was more than capable of fucking her as a mere mortal woman, but Bella would hear none of it. Of course not. Stubborn, sexy, forthright, Bella used every erotic ploy in her arsenal to shake me down and convince me to take her life, making her my mate forever.

The first time we would have sex would be during her metamorphosis into a vampire. Otherwise, Bella would not let me touch her intimately no matter how much I goddamn dazzled her or professed my undying love.

_Pump, pump, pump._

A stunning vision in nudity, Bella was a celestial thing. Formed of constellations, she was a star that would burn out with a bright orgasmic flash before her time, only to live on like a burst nebula that still echoed in the dark night sky eons after its final fireworks.

I skimmed my hand over her flesh, breezily whispering my palm to the swollen pink nipples, pushing with my long index and middle fingers down upon the top of the pebbling pearlish tit, hushing along her navel that was a small swell waving to my caress, smoothing like a feather around her girlish hips.

Bella's back, a fragile vertebral construction, arched up as I bent down and engulfed one succulent creamy orb into my mouth. Toxin swilled over my teeth and filled my mouth. Oh so fucking achingly softly, I scraped my teeth up her tit and released the globe that was now glistening and completely moist. I lapped at her nipples and suckled them into my mouth, running the slicing razors of my teeth back and forth, back and forth before I licked her damp cleavage.

Idly swiping along her inner thighs, splaying skin that would melt like softened butter with just the slightest force of my fingers, I played with her. I wanted Bella pleasured enough to be wet and ready and distracted from the dual intrusion to come. Any hindrance to my plan to fuck her and suck her was unacceptable; even Bella's discomfort that would surely come from the sheer volume of my erection was deplorable.

I ran my hand over and over her sleek contours until she was gasping and stretched taut, and my fingers were nicely glossed over.

Engorged, Bella's heart drove out a fresh river of blood that lit the effluvial deltas of her body while I pushed my index finger into the blazing recess of her pussy and siphoned sticky honey from her clit. With pitiful, puny strength, she tried to snatch my head further against her with her knees at my ears and her hands ripping, harmlessly, at my hair.

I growled through her and swatted thosepesky hands away, took her calves and manacled them to the mattress, "Just let me eat you, Bella." My tone was so abyssal that is caused soundwaves of lust to roll like currents outward from my inhabitance between her thighs.

Prodding, sucking, niftily biting, fingering her solid, I took Bella to the edge and made an aperitif of her luxurious humidity.

I felt like a sommelier drowning in the finest vintage wines.

Only I was a more devilish Dionysus, feasting from the savagery of her fucking arousal and preparing to dine from her flesh, all with her agreement.

_Pound._

_Pound._

_Pound._

Her throbbing heart, that meaty, beating organ, and my fingers stroking fast inside of her, out and around, begged with revenant sound.

As her legs jumped against my iron hold and her hips danced before me, as her orgasm overtook her and her juicy essence was slung down my throat paving the way for the blood to come, Bella thrashed like a heaving sweaty monster; like a newborn brought to bear by the savagery of initial bloodlust!

"Edward! _EDWARD!" _ But for the dank, rusky quality of her sexified voice, she would have been screeching. I wanted her to be quiet so I could enjoy my appetizer, to tell her that it was rude to talk unless first spoken to.

Bella's body still jerked as I sat back and away, dismounted her legs and then the bed. A post-coital masterpiece, she licked her thirsty lips and watched me through eyes that were the color of the insides of the earth. Soon they would be the very hue of volcanic eruptions and cooling jetting lava.

Holding my growing cock in one hand, I touched its weeping tip to her breasts, plucked it along her nipples, housed it between her tits and hissed at the purchase of insanely plush hills still wet from my venomous saliva. Stroked into the shards of her hipbones. Her hands came up to make a bowl around my smooth balls, causing a dark moan to fall from my gaping mouth, "_Bella_." I smirked as she made a quick recovery. _This might not be so bad after all._

Grasping me by my sac, she encouraged me to my knees on the oversized bed, stole her free hand up my inner thighs, gouging with her fingernails but not making a dent as she prodded my legs further apart. Grabbing my wrist that was still bound by fist to my shaft, Bella pushed the distended head of my cock to her red mouth that blossomed outward. Blanketing back and forth over me, running the kitten tip of her tongue over the slit and dipping in, before letting her lips fall lax and open and over me just to the hard ridge of my head, Bella tongued all around and my dick distended yet more!

A sultry murmur tangled down the ridged weapon of my erection, "_Mmmm_, gorgeous, Edward. I know you are meant to be mine." Words failed me. Denying myself this pleasure would be utterly futile. The berry bright of her lips made a fruitful snack of my cock; I placed one hand at the nape of her perspiring neck and the other gingerly through her hair, and settled in to watch.

Her mouth, soft as thistle and dandelion fluff, enclosed me, her lips plumped out and looked divine, _they fucking felt sublime!_

Though my erection was raging hard, I felt malleable, made human through her touch just as Bella would be made tough, unyielding, a vampire, from mine.

I needed to cum at someone else's ministrations. _I could make a fast recovery too._

I felt as if a trickle of civility was flowing, haltingly, back into my barren chest cavity.

_Thrump._

_Thrump._

_Thrump._

Was that my heart?

I shook my head, delirious with the sting of my balls scrunching up into inscrutable orgasm, so tight that there was no other release but to cum straight down Bella's throat, starting in small drops that grew to an overflowing deluge that slid down and leaked out, down to her pointed chin.

"_BELLA! FUCK!" _Now it was I who was being rude and forgetting to use my indoor voice.

With a shudder I pulled out of her mouth, away from her face that was red and aglow with her hard work. I palmed her shoulders and laid her flat out, as if on a marble slab. Dilated to near black, so aroused that her pupils could no longer see straight, Bella was somnolently graceful. _Beautiful and elegant as she had never been before._

_Thud….thud…thud. _ So turned on that her heart disobeyed the shaking of her limbs and sought to stall before its due time.

I massaged her breast, relit the fire of her blood.

_Trip, trip, trip, _she sped up again, just enough to welcome me with open arms and spread legs and dripping pussy.

This was decadent and completely irresponsible! I didn't even know with any real certainty if I would still want to be with Isabella Swan in a month from now, let along a fucking century! Carlisle had counseled me against this….but I took no heed, had paid no mind.

And I just didn't care. I was hopeless and hapless and guided by my human hormones that I had less control over than my vampire's lethal instincts.

As if beguiled, Bella took my entrance assuredly. Until I hit the breaking point. I could have stopped. But I didn't. Pressing forward, slowly, I ruptured through and watched her outward pain at my trespassing that was as apparent as the fist-tight clenching of her ripply inner body that gripped my cock and tried to thrust me out all at the same time!

I was in her, fully rooted, and I was going no-fucking-where. Expelling fresh air that drenched Bella with ignited concupiscence, I licked her shoulder up to her messy locks and whispered through strained breaths, "You asked for this, love."

Biting her lower lip, she nodded in accord. _That's my girl._

Gathering the small of her back in one hand and her ripe ass in the other, I pulled her roughly and straighter to me. And observed with satisfaction when her spine stretched out, bones popping, marrow saturating, her long wavy hair mopping up the pillows she was suspended over.

Beginning a gentle glide, I came out of her, looked down at my cock that shook to a steel rod and toyed with it over her lips until we were both polished and priapic and pussy-bright and slippery again.

A soft rhythm started. In, _pulse_, out, _wait._ Every so often I beat into her faster, coarse and beginning to feel violence scratching under my concrete skin.

_PUMP, PUMP, PUMP._

I lipped her mouth, bit her bottom lip, just a taste of the gruesomeness to come. Laved her nipples and she swiveled her hips until her clit bounced in time over my pubic bone.

As I sunk over Bella, first between her thighs that were blinding white hills and through her vivid, wet, and diluted red pussy, then over her lean gazelle-like neck, stretched out like a fine wire that was about to be snapped, and glowing a cascade of blue rivulets at the turf of her tissue, I gloried in her tiny whimpers of orgasm.

She wanted to whip her head from side to side, but that would just be messy.

Moving just my hips, thrusting over and over, I caged Bella's skull, my fingers a jail keeping her still. A little nibble, a small tuck, and then I could withhold my hunger no longer! Opening wide over her throat, her milky blood thinned with my venom, hit my cheeks, sloshed down my throat. Unbelievably, the ceaseless flow tasted of innocence, want, dedication, hope, ecstasy…_all the severed permutations of love._

I heard myself grunting and her sighing.

_Jesus Christ!_

_Slurp. _

_Slurp._

_Slurp._

Now I understood why Bella was my singer. Her _cantante_ surge was a thick, hot, rich, toothsome stream of love!

Devoted to me so deeply, with such immediacy that it polluted her blood! She couldn't _not_ love me, she was meant to be my woman and my singer; the two fates were knotted.

_Thump, thump, thump._

I was certain that was my heart, kicking against the trappings of death and trying to rise, like Lazarus, once again.

An epiphany so clean and clear and sharp that I ceased gulping her into the charred innards of my body immediately. I had _no choice _but to love her! Bella was now inside of me just as my toxin, the sudden powerful slurry of ejaculation, jetted into her.

Her emulation and adoration poured out on the threads of oozing blood that flowed over the fast coagulating ligatures of her neck. Decanted into my parched veins, her emotions jolted my still heart like a shot of epinephrine. Sealing the wounds I had opened all over her suddenly taut, comatose form, I made haste but never squandered movement, never became sloppy. The material of skin that kept her immobile was immediately precious.

And I should have known this before.

My head ached. My heart pounded, stilted, stuttered as if from an arrhythmia.

I tried to push some of Bella's humanity back inside of her, because fucking frankly, this hurt too much to bear.

She was ten thousand times stronger than I!

_Open your eyes!_

Only one hour in, and I was a desperate mess, pleading with Bella to just open her fucking eyes.

Carlisle looked in, observed my wretched state and his thoughts were quietly filled with my own grotty comeuppance.

_I should have fucking understood!_

_Pump…_

_pump…_

_p..u…m….p_

_I was wrong….I love her!_

Was I too late?

Her heart died.

Hours later, days may have passed. I didn't have a fucking clue. I just sat and watched her, soothed her burning skin and listened to the harrowing balking screams that caved her chest and cowled out of her throat, unseeingly and unremittingly.

_Thump_

_Thump_

_Thump_

She was awakening.

A shift of lily-white limbs, long and curved and perfectly womanly.

_Too late._

She was frightening in her imperial beauty. Ravaging in her tainted desires.

_I was wrong, everything was not going to be all-_

My thoughts were cut off as Bella rose from the bed-cum-casket.

Pure streaming hatred and a wish to feel cruelty at her new hands washed over her longer, leaner, rounder, harder body.

Like mahogany, her hair wafted in regal waves, teasing her nipples and listing over her back that I would never be able to bend to my will again.

Sunlight worshipped her; made her a dancing, hazy, unreal image.

Seemingly masterful of the new speed, attuned to the multitasking visuals and fluidity of her emotions, Bella stepped lightly toward me, an ethereal but very real and brutal creature of sensuality coupled with killing tendencies.

Even though I knew she was intent on murdering me, rightfully so, I could not help but appreciate the animalistic, primeval picture Bella painted! So fucking beautiful, she was rebirth. Renaissance. Risen. Bent on razing me to the ground. All of our love was now in me. She was empty but for slaughter.

_Thud thud thud._

She recognized me, and having ingested my own devious thoughts, knew me fully. The long pull of church tower bells was her reborn voice, "You did this to me, Edward."

I was complacent, I nodded. Senseless. Love would never reach her now.

I felt the weight of Bella, the agility and alacrity of her, her unfathomable control as she crushed my larynx so that I could not scream.

"I always knew you would be mine," the grin that filled her mouth smelled of massacres to come.

It was pure terror to feel the woman that was meant to be mine for infinity shearing my limbs from my body. I bit my tongue clean off, clenched my fists that were no longer attached to my body, pulled air into my decapitated head as she made piecemeal, pound flesh of me.

Through visions of red haze and suffering, I watched her stealthy retreat. Bella spat on my carcass before crossing the threshold.

Eerie laughter and killing words called to me from down the hallway, "Oh, Carlisle. _Carlisle?_ I feel so much better now. Won't you come give me a physical?"

Bella had left me with just enough vitality to hear the torment of my sire. Gurgling air through my broken windpipe, I concentrated on my own death rattle instead of the distinctly inhuman caterwauling of Carlisle's losing battle with my beloved.

_Thud, thud, thud. _That was the heft of his heavy body being dragged down the steep winding staircase.

I was not dead, not yet. As Bella reached the front door, hauling a broken man behind her to deliver to Esme, I began to gather my pieces and put them back together.

She knew better. Bella should have torched me.

I was not dead.

And now she would never die.

My demon mistress called me.

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**Hey, it was kind of sexy/grotesque/sick-funny/sad/beautiful, right?**

**Go on, review. **

**Next one…PLAY! Now, that's gotta' be fun-nay, yes? Okay! Yes, it will be!**


	3. Play

**The Twilight Twenty-Five****  
**Prompt: 12. Play  
Pen name: goldenmeadow

Pairing: The Cullen Family  
Rating: M (mostly T but for some later crude language)

V, as always, many many thanks!

**So, this is essentially ridiculous. I'm taking gigantic liberties, and this is meant to be pure silly. I**_**n my world**_** the Cullens age up to a certain point; think Nahuel and Renesgag. Yeah, yeah, I know they were half breeds, but I don't care. So, these Cullen kids are children in the early nineties and will reach their maturity (aged 17-18) in about 2006. And then their aging will halt completely. JSYK.**

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**Play**

**Forks, Washington**

**Circa 1992, 1999, 2006**

**The Cullens**

**Kindergarten**

Alice wanted to watch 'Jem and the Holograms'_. More like the Misfits! _True to form, Jasper tried his mind-meldy thing to get her to switch the telly over to 'G.I. Joe'.

Passing by, three and a half-foot tall Rosalie pinched Jasper by the ear, swatted wee Alice on the bum and stole the remote before she settled down in front of her Matchbox Car collection, "Jem and Joe can suck it. I'm waiting for G.I. Jane! She's way cooler." An infantile pout laid across her childish lips.

Emmett jumped on my back and bellowed in my ear, "Let's play Masters of the Universe, Edward! I'll be Skeletor and you be He-Man!"

Making a swift costume change, Alice flounced back in, all gilded lily and tiny toddler and toy-like, dressed in her latest creation, something she liked to call _Mississippi Barbie on the Bayou._ Her teensy replica trailer trash heels clicked on the pale heart-of-pine floorboards. In a voice that was the size of a mite, she chuckled at Rosalie, "I'm sorry I ever showed you the preview! You know that movie won't be out until 1997, right? Give it a rest, Rosalie. You've got five years to go."

Empath Jasper gave up his struggle, ignored the girls, and lined up his Confederate and Union armies in battle formation. It was Antietam, the 1862 Battle of Sharpsburg, all over again. Through the girls' chatter, his thoughts found mine, _See that, Edward? That's me._ He pointed to a sympathetically rendered tall, blond soldier that held his bayonet at the ready and flashed a wry smile my way. _We were so much older than this Romper Room._

While Rosalie reconfigured her Scalextric racetrack for the thousandth time in the blink of an eye, Emmett bungled about with his Transformers since I was decidedly _not_ going to wage a He-Man war with him. Ever the joker, he trounced Optimus Prime over the flyway Rosalie had just constructed and then pounded with his tot's fleet feet up the stairs to escape the head smack that was due him.

Quietly sitting in the corner, away from my siblings, I gazed at the Baby Grand that awaited me and contained myself with spilling over my plastic Fisher-Price xylophone like it was a pianoforte. The flat, bakelite keys were all the cunning hues of the rainbow, reminding me of young Bella's tights that she'd worn to Kindergarten the other day, breaking the dress code one more time.

When I had made fun of her attire, she'd sucker punched me in the gut and then her small angular face had scrunched up in a grimace as her fist turned numb on contact.

Calling from the landing above, Emmett mocked me, "Edward's got a crush! Edward and Bella, up in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes marriage, then comes _turning_-"

Like Speedy Gonzales, I soared up to him and was about to split his malachite head against the spindles when Alice's timely shout of glee rattled the windows and screeched across my temples, "YAY! Tomorrow's going to be a snow day!"

Called by the fight looming and Alice's vision, Esme strolled into the parlor, a perfect mother figure. In a sing-song voice imbued with love for us, her children, she chided, "Off to bed now, darlings. We'll go hunting tomorrow."

Tucked in for another sleepless night, I daydreamed about my friend Bella.

In the morning we were outfitted in mini camouflage, most unnecessarily, and loaded with camping gear for our trip north to feed from the wilds of Alaska.

Emmett made a quick kill of his Kodiak bear and looked to Esme for her motherly approval. Blood was like spleen, splattered all over his vest and Gap khakis. Esme tsked, "Emmett, don't play with your food, honey, it messes up your handsome face."

**Junior High**

Splayed out over the comfortable white sofas in the family room, we convened after our first day of Junior High.

With Esme's drawer of polished silver sitting on the glass coffee table, I lifted up spoon after spoon, attempting to bend it to my will; trying to forget the way Bella had sat next to me, unconsciously fidgeting in her seat during American History. Jasper had kept thinking to me, "_I was there! That's not how it went down! I could be a far better professor than this bow-tied dick-sausage!"_

Ignoring him, all I could think about was Bella's soft locks, because sometimes she bent sideways to forage for a notebook or pen from her backpack and her hair spilled across my forearm and thighs. It made my skin scratchy like from hives and my dick--that was just beginning to understand pleasure--grow rigid in my jeans.

Instead of thinking about _her_, I concentrated on the spoons at hand.

We'd just watched _The_ _Matrix, _and I needed focus on something other than the unfathomable impossibility of rounding the bases with Bella.

Emmett slung his huge body next to mine and laughed, "Dude, you're a mind reader, not fucking Neo!"

I scowled and strained harder, throwing a half-hearted noogie against Emmett's thick, titanium-plate skull. My voice was still cracking and annoyingly prepubescent, "Fuck you, at least I can dodge bullets."

The spoons were decidedly _not_ melting to my will.

_I bet Bella's thighs and breasts would bend to my will!_

Momentarily distracted by these erotic thoughts that scurried across my mind about ten times per second, I almost missed the whir of Esme's carving knife whizzing past my left ear…_almost. _Emmett's warning came two fractions of time too late, "Yo, Uri, dodge that!"

As it was, the blunt blade sheared across my hair with a scream of metal on metal and I leapt to my feet, crouching and hissing and pissed, "Son of a bitch! You're dead!"

Emmett took to his full height, trying to intimidate me, but I just smiled my deadly smile and smirked my lethal smirk at his bonhomie when he laughed back, "_Ha ha ha_, I already am, bro!"

Ever the protector, Alice placed herself between me and Emmett. At thirteen years old, she was not much bigger than the preschool sprite she'd been ten years ago, but she was ferocious, "Shut it, _Oafeous_. Just because you have no special talents besides being freakishly huge, that's no reason to goad Edward! Cut him some slack. Besides," she sneaked a grin towards me, "Bella and I are going to be such good friends."

Unfazed, Emmett tried to psyche me out with a quick lunge that I met in a tight headlock – _asshole always forgot that I could read his intentions before he even knew them!_ As I clamped my rigid forearm ceaselessly around his throat, he gasped and growledgrowled to Alice, "Bite me, Trinity."

Joining the fray, Jasper took my arms off their deadlock around Emmett, pulled Alice into his side and settled her before somberly intoning, "Thou must not slander The Matrix, dudes."

_Asshole, _Emmett thought.

"Pussy-whipped," I agreed.

We bumped fists and it was all good.

Until later when Carlisle poked his head through our door at the stroke of midnight, "Lights out, boys. You've got school tomorrow."

Emmett snorted and I chortled, "Yeah, but Carlisle? We Can't Sleep!"

**Prom**

My starched tight, white bow button-down abraded my neck. I just wanted some blood, really, and didn't know why we were even here.

The shoulders of my tux strained against my muscles.

They were all paired up, and I was fifth wheel again, waiting for Bella, I suppose.

Since she had grown tits and my dick had made its appearance known, I had tried to avoid her more than ever.

Friends that joked, lifelong buddies. I was undead, and just now I understood the ramifications.

Vague hints and smiles and smirks made me wonder if Bella knew of my true nature, and how much I wanted her…_endlessly._

Shoving my blazer off my shoulders, feeling something akin to sweatiness in the heaving, clammy, human mess of the gymnasium that was pathetically played out with sparkles, tissue paper roses, helium filled balloons and a very fuckin' bad band fronting the feeble tinfoil constructed thrones.

Sinking my eyes into her, brilliant Bella, as she entered the double doors, my breath caught. She was so wrong, inept, sublime all at once.

And she'd come alone.

Just like me.

Alice shuddered at her dress and leggings; apparently Bella's outfit was a huge crime against haute couture. I ignored her diatribe until she stalked off, _finally,_ and occupied my evening by enjoying the sight of more of Bella's creamy skin than had ever been on show before!

Emmett found me skulking on the sidelines, "What you waiting for, bro? Senior Prom; it's all about matriculating and fornicating! "

I was appalled at his suggestion, even though I had thought of nothing else besides fucking Bella Swan for the last five years. "It's not like that, Emmett. And anyway, I don't even know if it's possible…._you know_, with a human."

"Braw, you ain't that big! And if you don't get in there right quick, there's a _bevy_ of boys lining up, trying to find the balls to ask her to dance," _– fucking bevy, I wished Emmett would lay off the Roget's already. _ I stopped rolling my eyes long enough to take stock of the Tylers, Mikes, and Erics that were literally trying to psyche themselves up enough to approach Bella. _Shit, he's right._ Em continued, "And I'm assuming Carlisle told you all about _the birds and the bees, _yeah?"

I groaned loudly, "Christ, yes, Carlisle gave me the _dad speech._ All: 'We don't know about hybrids, cross-pollination could be a tricky thing, _blah, blah, blah_….you better holster that weapon, _yada yada yada_…' So fucking embarrassing, man"!

Laughing at my expense, Emmett decided to put getting laid in layman's terms, "So you know that your penis, which is really like a glacier, goes into her snatch that will be so fucking human HOT-"

Furious and becoming more and more self-conscious, I cut him off, "YES! _Dickhead_! I know all about what you and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice, _and Carlisle and Esme_ get up to! Shit! Not only do I hear it, but I fuckin' see it!"

"Dude! That is so cool! Can you show me?" Emmett clapped me on the shoulder so hard that I stumbled and his eyes bulged in voyeuristic excitement.

"Uh, no? In case you've forgotten, I'm the one with ESP. All you have is _superhuman strength, He-Man_," I couldn't help but roll my eyes again as I muttered, "_Loser_. It's not like we all don't have that!"

Feigning a blow to my gut that was really beginning to feel nauseated while I tried to pluck up the courage to ask Bella to dance, Em resorted to name calling, "Cunt."

"Dingleberry," I parlayed.

"_Monkey-spanker._ So, you've got rubbers, right?" he asked.

_Oh Jesus Christ, deliver me from this Prom Hell. _"_Smegma-breath._ Yes," I bit out.

Thoroughly enjoying my squirmy discomfort, he kept at it, "Please tell me you bought Magnums? 'Cause you know those paltry human-sized condoms can't contain cocks as big as ours, right?"

_Fuck!_

"YES!" I roared and all dancing ceased, the music momentarily stopped, the streamers shook and a few Mylar balloons popped with my inhumanly loud snarl.

Bella looked over and smiled.

"Nice one, Edward," Emmett snorted.

"Shut up, man. She's looking at us!"

"So she is. And smiling. Go on, go get your woman," Em pushed me in her direction and Bella watched in amusement as I moved across the sticky gym floor in her direction.

Jock-breath was right. I'd been around humans all my life. Having sat next to Bella in every class we'd ever had together, pulled her pigtails, built fortresses in the glens of Forks with her, I was nearly immune to singer's blood. I'd _never_ be unaffected by the living beauty of her person that called to my deadened heart, my fallen soul.

Approaching her, a svelte vision of cream and peach clothed in what really was kind of a hideous cerulean gown, I swept my trembling hand over the base of her spine and felt her shiver and arch into my touch. The vulnerability of her flesh was utterly sweet. The knocking in my knees showed my nervousness and belied the assuredness of my caress and my words.

Patting the talisman in my pocket, a little silver teaspoon, totally mangled by my mind alone, I braced my shaky legs and leaned down to her, swept a tendril of coiled hair away from her flushing cheek and managed to ask in a smooth voice, "Bella, may I have this dance?"

_I can do this!_

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**~~See, I told you I could do sweet and funny!~~**

**Now Review?**

**Oh yeah, Uri Geller, y'all know who he is, right?**

**Next up: Touch. My my my, what are we gonna' make of that?**

**If you're not doing so already, please check out my full-length, funny-as-fuck and equally sexy/angsty Dead Confederates: **

**Junior, Bubba, Eddie, Carl and their ladies tearing it up in the South.**

**Cheers!**


	4. Plea

**I have a new beta for my challenge and contest writings! Welcome Viola Cornuta. No, V and I have not broken up; she's my Inc., DC's, RWaC go-to gal. **

**Disclaimer: SM owns all the people I write about. She does. Fucking awesome owner of Twi, that is SM. Me, I'm a lowly schmuck.**

**~~So, I lied. This is Plea. I though y'all needed a break from my ridiculousness for a bit. So, let's get back to canon, Rie-style.~~**

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**The Twilight Twenty-Five****  
**Prompt: 13. Plea  
Pen name: goldenmeadow

Pairing: Carlisle/Elizabeth Masen

Rating: T

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**Plea**

**Circa 1918**

**Chicago, Illinois**

**Carlisle**

I took another turn through the infirmary; the gas lights dimmed and then flickered back to cast a wash of muted orange gloam and the smell of burning fuel about the long room.

One by one, the cots had emptied. Influenza was a miasmic disease, which culled through the population in complete socialist disregard to race, stature, religion, wealth.

In this country, they were all equals. And uniformly unequivocally bound to the rampage of a malicious malaise that stampeded from scullery maid to houseboy to heiress to master of the house, master at arms to brothel owner.

I alone was safe.

I would forever be untouched by ailment, apart from the thirst for human blood that gripped my throat in its tight unrelenting chokehold, a visceral no less viral clutch upon my innards, which, though they did not move, still felt the pain of want.

Carnage came in many forms. And I'd personally viewed, front row and center, most of them in my very long time on this earth.

I'd had my share just as much as this rapacious illness.

I begged the doctors and nurses, those who were far too young to die, those who had families to return home to, to leave me to this work.

Of humility and pride and ethic, they all declined, stating it was below my station to clean out slop pans, or I would be incapable of seeing to everyone.

Little did they know. As the nights wore on, I became more and more restless while my colleagues became infinitely more exhausted by the strain. Letting them doze where they were sitting and oftentimes even standing, I gave pace to my speed to clean, coddle, swab, swaddle and comfort.

I smiled pleasantly as my comrades awoke to the pristine state of the ward, congratulating each other on making it through one more night that had been filled with death and groaning and vomit and diarrhea unbeknownst to them.

It was the least I could do while they continued to negligently endanger themselves.

The cots – I couldn't imagine those creaking rusty iron bedsteads to be comfortable to the hale and healthy, let alone the infirm -- spilled their contents, lifeless corpses, to the morgue whose employees worked overtime to process and dis-house the bodies that had melted like from the sickening workings of Typhoid Mary.

The cost of this ruinous riotous revilement was too high.

Pretending an air of calm I really did not feel, I inspected charts, took temperatures and listened to final confessions as if I were a man of the cloth as my shoes clicked over the tiles that needed mopping of discharge once again.

This was my just due, to surround myself in blood, the very thing that sustained me, while continuing to deny it. My own personal horsehair vest, like scratchy wool upon my skin, splintery parchment scraping my throat.

Sometimes I wanted to touch it with my mouth as it flowed from cuts, wounds, open sores. My lips pursed, my tongue longed to reach out, the empty grotto of my chest clenched in ache. Overriding it all was the pure tyranny I had witnessed, some of it at my own hands. Just once, just at the beginning of this eternal life.

Although not quite born into the Middle Ages, the fear of the preternatural still abounded. The supernatural had surrounded us. Reformation, Humanism and Renaissance were all to follow, but while I was a boy, I lived in the mongering fear of things that went bump in the night; fantastical creatures who would not be explained away with the rising of the sun.

Doing my father's bidding, a strict Anglican vicar whose goal was to persecute and destroy all who worked against his heavenly deity, I pursued those we assumed to be witches – _though now I wondered at their true nature_ – and vampires, whose ashen rust ran coagulated in my veins now.

I had to find a reason for this hideous existence.

To turn a disability into a gift.

_I would not be a gruesome beast!_

In my first days, having eaten my tongue off to quiet my screams while flames burst from within the marrow of my bones, eating through layers of tissue, scorching my sight in vermillion, causing me to shake and needing to shriek, I did nothing but roll, silently, in agony.

Wakening, I burned yet more.

A deep pull of air, which neither satisfied me nor filled the fixed location of my resolute lungs, brought a heady scent into my nose. It intoxicated me so much more than wine of Jesus' body.

Hunkering low on my haunches, I slithered towards that smell.

It was a woman whose beauty was only defined by the vision of blood racing just beneath the nothing of her skin.

Lips curling, throat curdling, growl hurtling, I pounced and drove the spikes of my teeth into her neck, first, and then her upheaved breasts and softened thighs beneath manifold taffeta skirts!

Satiated, disgusted, replete and vile, I shoved her away with one hand to her boot-clad ankles and clasped her to me by her lax shoulders. Upon my knees, discovering though I smoldered with weeping, I could not call forth tears. I held this unnamed lass and sought to throw her aside all at the same time.

Thus was the dual nature of my being; forever at war.

She was the first I took. She was the last.

I was horrifyingly full up over the next several days. A stuffed-to-my-gullet feeling that sickened me. When, _finally_, hunger twisted my gut again, I breathed through my mouth, or did not breathe at all. Wandering the park near my father's church, a flash of white and brown and flesh cavorted beneath a copse of trees.

_Deer._

Opening my olfactory senses, inhaling deeply, I imbibed their musky odor and found it not lacking!

Days passed into months into years. I never aged, never salivated but for toxin that I could feel coating my perfect teeth. I never urinated nor did I sleep.

I never came across the vampires who had sired me.

In need of diversion, I took to medicine school. Ever the self-torturer, I thought it the best way to inure myself against human blood.

Shockingly, it worked. Surprisingly, I had an aptitude for physiognomy.

Though the ticking of time stood still for me, it moved its second hand forward for others. My father died. Having laid him to rest, I moved on.

In Italy I came across my first coven of vampires. Though more civilized than what I had known, attempting to govern their own, collecting art, keeping citizens alive – _if only to do their bidding _– they were still bloodthirsty. These Volturi and I had an agreement for a time. They would shelter me and encourage me in my studies, and I would turn a blind eye to their cruel killing of the populace.

Another century, certain friendships were made. But my dedication to the breathing ones was mocked and I had rather be around _them_ than my own.

In a first class cabin, as befitting one of the chosen Volturi disciples, I forged to the New World where wars erupted through pioneering spirit and claim-staking of precious land.

Meeting up with men and women of my inglorious kind, I was always cordial, quiet, and bracing ahead. Not judging them their tastes for the blood I would not allow myself, I looked for my own consignment in this being that would be mine for a very long time.

Trying to find acceptance in this territory that was yet to be settled. I could either be a creeping thing of lore or a part of society that walked about in the day lit hours, made a living, got on with life.

Hubris was mine. I did not want to wear the brand of vilification.

My time in Chicago was coming to an end. Soon I would move on, take up residence elsewhere, work, make no friends, hold myself apart and hie away from embraces, touches, invitations.

Nearly immune to the fragrant scope of blood, not deigning to partake of the infusion that was both beautifully enchanting and pestilent in its putrefaction, I doctored wherever I was accepted.

A sharp rattling wet thick cough broke my reverie and reminded me that I was not, in fact, alone this night.

A chair raked across the tiles somewhere down the room and a curtain was parted as another body was wheeled out.

Following the sound of sputum, I found a young lady half keeled over with the back of her skeletal hand pressed to her mouth in an attempt to keep the foaming expectorant within. Grabbing a tin kidney-shaped basin, I ran to her and wrenched her hand aside, with all the gentleness that I had learned, and enabled her to rid her mouth of the effluvia inside.

Lowering her back to the bed, I placed the bowl aside and out of vision.

The smell of antiseptic expunged any last smell of her vomit.

Her hands clasped to her chest, she grappled with the sheet and met my eyes obliquely. Her own were like the dales and glens of my fatherland.

And queerly clear for all the calamitous epidemic that made piecemeal of her organs.

The tall clock tower of the bank that rested against our hospital took on its loud toll, denoting midnight.

In a crackling whisper, like wax paper, she said, "My husband is dead." It was not a question, but a statement.

I nodded and held her fragile wilting hand in both of my own, cooling the spiking temperature of her body.

Ever more focused, those orbs sharpened upon me. I could never have expected her next words, choked on bile as they were, "Please, I beg you, Doctor Cullen, save my son! He is my only child, he's not meant to die. Not now. _Not ever_."

Shaken and scared she had seen _me_ as I was not meant to appear, I brooked indifference, released her hand and settled back down onto the mattress that was not even dented beneath her wasted form.

I should have just sped out of this domicile of death and never looked back!

Instead I dropped my head to my hands and hated my next words, because _she knew_! Platitudes would not do here. Utterances never before spoken found the crux of my straightened lips as I all but barked out, "But is he ready for my kind of death?"

Catastrophic hope pounded me with her next weakening pronunciation, "Yes!"

I growled and cornered this Elizabeth Masen back onto her cot, the hardened coral isotopes of my eyes unjust, "How do you know this, Madame?"

I had no thought for my own safety. I would willingly give up my life, my punctured being at the drop of a coin; but for one to know these things was unfathomable. And to ask me to murder, maim, sire her only child was unmentionable. I all but gagged on the odd human reflex that pushed venom like choler up into my mouth. Not out of hunger, but out of hurt.

Showing not one sliver of self-preservation, Miss Elizabeth did not shrink beneath my rage; a thing I generally replaced with compassion.

Relenting, hiding my eyes, loosening my muscles, becoming the genteel doctor again, in search of answers, I listened as her breathy beaten voice carried on so succinctly, "I can see into your mind. I read your compassion. I hear your silenced words," the simplicity and purity of her smile smote me. "You should talk more often, out loud. Edward will need that."

Newly grasping her hand, a flighty pale thing that grappled with death's fast approaching scythe borne by a black winged carriage and the lashing of night-dark steeds, I was shaken.

Skin and bones, kneeling at death's door, she entreated. Sallow, an invalid, leaking life force, all I saw of this woman, the might of her encapsulated in my precise eyes, was a mother. Impaired by the trappings of maternal instinct to keep her own alive even while she succumbed to the wasting disease. A glorious person. _A mother_. Paternal impulses were something I had never understood.

_She was so sure._

The flicker of my pulse that was only a stopped watch of a thing increased in speed as Elizabeth Masen's slowed to a near halt. A doctor, a savior, I had never desired to sire another, to make one of my own kind. Solely alone for two hundred and fifty-five years, I had been solitary but capable.

And now I yearned for more than I'd ever thought possible.

Acquiescing, I filled a glass syringe. I could stand her fight, her misery, her just-love, her beseeching no more. I would answer her call, if she would give me this in return, and allow me to ease her ceaseless pain with the knowledge her son would continue with some semblance of life. Disinfectant and decadent drops of morphine created a cloying mist as I surpassed the usual calming dose with words of solace and gratitude and a confidence I didn't quite feel any longer.

Wavering light filtering through an ampoule and dimming from ivy brilliance to deadened moss, Elizabeth's eyes extinguished with her final respirations. Her serene smile turning to rigor extended from beyond the grave.

The lights blinkered out again, for good. This dense darkness on a night so portentous was nothing more than appropriate. I reached for a candle, hearing the faint lapsed canticles sung in my father's parish church in days of yore. My only guide to the young man who was about to meet his grim reaper was song ages old and Christian, and an orange-yellow flame that elongated and rippled in front of me. I perched on a hard chair at his bedside and affected a soothing tone as I stole a cool cloth across his sweaty brow, "Edward Anthony Masen, your mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Masen, wanted you to have this.

Even in feverish delirium, his eyes were bright and of forests, just like his mother's, when he turned them to me. The ague that racked his body was nothing compared to the simple unholy paroxysm of grief the seized him. Agitation chilled over his form, a boy on the cusp of manhood. Would I bring his end? Could I save him for something more. _Was there more?_

I felt the loneliness of all my years spread its complaint over my legs, my arms, my trembling hands as I placed his mother's wedding ring in his palm and folded his clammy fingers over this last possession.

Understanding and sympathy and desperation to belong to another, to replicate that thing which was every human being's right, _parenthood_, solidified me. I crossed myself, whispering, "_Forgive me Father, for I am about to sin."_

Though I did not want to read his fear that ran like spilled ink across the meadow of his eyes, I kept his sight as I leant down, showing him my teeth while I yet calmed his skin with my touch. Comprehension was faster than my supernatural haste as it landed, a written edict, across his visage. A rarity in the one instance, perplexingly stunning to see twice in one family, Edward had his mother's gift to see within the thoughts of others.

His blood so hot and pure tasted of innocence and torment, fatigue and fight. Working more quickly to make him a vampire than I ever had to save a human life in surgery, I was relieved to take my leave of his innards. There was no struggle, no desire to linger and feast. Consumed, instantly enraptured with singular devotion, civility, fatherly emotion, the fates had handed me something irreplaceable!

A son!

Sudden realization illuminated me, taking over the vaporizing traces of Edward's taste. I knew that which I had always hoped to be true, that souls did live on after demise and passed from one being to another. The flash of his blood into my veins was replete with juicy promise of a future for Edward that was meant to be! Not now, not even soon, but eventually, _he was going to know love like no other_.

There _was_ grander significance to this monster whose skin I inhabited!

Through my past, Elizabeth's death, and Edward's future, I was rebirthed.

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**~~Do you have chills?~~**

**I thank y'all that are reading and reviewing especially while I am posting like a madwoman. It does my wee tot-sized Alice heart ridiculously proud!**

**We'll do Touch next, and you will laugh out loud.**

**Cheers, Rie~**


	5. Touch

**The Twilight Twenty-Five****  
**Prompt: 20. Touch  
Pen name: goldenmeadow

Pairing: Edward/Bella

Rating: M

**Cheers to Vi, you're giving me a schooling, I love it!**

**Disclaimer: Not the owner.**

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**~~Okay, this is kind of a spoof of some fanfic clichés. I wrote this for Queen Vice, aka Vi/gillypots~~**

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**Touch**

**Circa 2006**

**Forks, Washington**

**Edward**

"Holy crow, Edward, what the fuck is _that?" _Bella jumped off the bed, almost tripping over a sports bra left in the middle of her floor in her haste to flick on the overhead light.

_Not exactly the reaction I'm going for, Bella._

"Um, my cock?" I had just disrobed, laying my clothes neatly on the rocking chair -- _my familiar companion_ -- in the corner of her bedroom. After months of erogenous entreaties, near innocent touches, chaste kisses that did nothing to dampen our passion, I had finally caved to Bella. I was excruciatingly bored with seeing to myself on a nightly basis…fantasies only got me so far, and it was difficult to aptly visualize Bella's body since it was always clothed in lumpy sweaters, misshapen woobie jeans, and a cotton full-coverage bra even when we snuggled down for the night. Much to my frustration, Bella had yet to agree to go shopping with bubbly fashionista Alice.

I was unable to resist any longer when I knew there was a warm, aroused, human Bella begging me to make love to her.

Now I stood, feet planted apart, naked, while Bella's eyes widened, and she circled around me, faintly brushing my cold impenetrable skin with just the tips of her pale tiny fragile trembling hands.

"Well, yeah….but what's with the flappy thing there?" Bella blushed her telltale pink but did not avert her chocolate brown gaze.

Pinching my uncircumcised flesh between my thumb and index fingers, I pulled it out, stretching the remaining skin around my erect member so that every ridge was a visible undulation, and the long vein that ran down the central underside of my shaft was a venom-filled road from root to canopy. "_Foreskin_, my love," I rolled the flat of my palm across my head and then down the side of my dick while I smoothed the tubal skin up over my tip with my other hand. The firmer I became, the less elasticity there was and my foreskin slowly pulled back. Incredibly, though I was pale as snow all over, my cock was rapidly turning a shade of lavender gray, much more saturated in hue at my tumescent head and the most velvet skin just beneath the lip. Hidden crepe-like flesh that rarely saw the light of day.

Her heart sped as she watched my ministrations, and I could smell her arousal from where I stood. _Breathe Bella!_

Grasping myself in both hands, twisting them up and down my cock in counterpoint spirals, I continued, "This, Bella, is what we call a Cavalier."

She dropped her well-worn copy of _Wuthering _Heights to the floor with a clatter and stepped close again, her doe-like orbs filled with wonder, "As opposed to?"

"A Roundhead, of course," I smirked as she whispered, "_Of course._"

"Haven't you ever seen one before?" I tilted my head to the side and asked, all the while fisting myself more vigorously. If we didn't get this show on the road pretty damn quickly I was going to climax all over her bedroom floor, not even having the pleasure of touching her!

"Jiminy cricket, no! You know Banner skimmed over the sex-ed section of Biology. But you are a bit Hulk-ish," she licked her plush pink lips and grinned, finally fucking touching me; one hand to my torso, sneaking around my nipples and the other splayed across my ass, bringing me against her so my cock twitched against the permeable skin of her belly.

_The Incredible Hulk? Great, now she was calling me a freak, how the fuck did she come up with that? _I wondered at the weird inner-workings of her head that were a totally silent mind-fuck to me.

"Huh?" I questioned.

"Duh, Edward…Mr. Banner…Bruce Banner…The Incredible Hulk?" She giggled placatingly and the long auburn swags of her strawberry scented hair tickled my chin and against my throat.

_Oh to hell with it, I don't care what she calls me as long as she keeps licking my paps with that rough kitten tongue of hers!_

With one hand cupping both her breasts together, I watched in fascination as the pert nipples almost met, _almost_ touched each other. My teeth safely sheathed under my sculpted icy lips, I sucked first one and then the other into the cold igloo of my mouth. And smiled against her tits when she was able to respirate enough to exhale a hot, "_Uhnngh," _across my chest that she had wet with her saliva.

Lowering a hand to her midnight blue lace boyshorts, I felt the dripping of moisture there. She was pooling in her panties! I was emboldened enough to swipe my fingers beneath the elastic to fondle her wet folds before running up to circle her bundle of nerves.

On an indrawn breath, Bella weakly murmured, "_Mmmm._ I just mean that you're _big._ Seriously well-endowed, right? And it's kind of wild that your-" she flapped those frail hands about, and I wanted to demand that she put them back to their rightful task.

"Penis?" I supplied, _helpfully of course_.

"That your _penis_ is malleable when the rest of your body is pretty much…"

"Obdurate."

Nodding her head and biting her lower lip, "Obdurate, right."

"Baby Bella, my love, it has us all stumped, even Carlisle," I lifted one eyebrow and bestowed my famous crooked half-smile upon her.

"Well, _it's_ certainly not stumpy! You'd have made a fine specimen in the sex-ed class, not that I'd want Lauren and Jessica drooling over this! I just can't wrap my head around the extra skin! Does it hurt? Can I move it?" _Christ!_ _Yes, Bella, yes! Touch it, do what you want with my cock, just fucking touch it already!_

She fingered it gently, and there was something, _definitely something_, I wanted Bella to wrap her mouth around.

Keenly watching her teeny fists engulfing my member, pulling the almost completely taut wrapping up as far as it would now reach, which wasn't very high at all anymore, Bella fucking giggled like she was simply watching some harebrained chick flick at a slumber party instead of giving me my first ever handjob!

Gently tearing her fingers away from their grip on me, I started pacing, damn near stomping…fraught with sexual excitement and galled at her laughter. Rolling my eyes, grasping at my messy bronze locks, pinching the bridge of my nose, clenching my jaw, I wearily sighed.

"Aw, Edward, don't be like that! It's just…_who knew?_ Vampires can be uncircumcised?"

"Given the times, my love, yes, of course we can. In fact, Emmett, Jasper, Carlisle…we all are-"

Frantically blushing, Bella shook her head, "Ewww, just gross. I don't need to know about _that_!"

"Can we please just stop talking about my Cavalier then, love?" I was bobbing in the air, desperate for her touch, and I knew she wanted me too. I could smell her arousal as she rubbed her creamy thighs together, trying to create some sort of friction to relieve herself.

"Come here, Edward," Bella's eyes darkened from milky cocoa to dark passionate coffee.

Not even a second elapsed before I was pressed up against Bella. I held her to me as her heavily bruised knees threatened to give out, skimmed my nose along her throbbing carotid artery, swung it along her little pointed jaw, and made a beeline for the succulent feast of flesh just below and slightly behind her left ear, silently entreating her to keep breathing.

Something growled. And it wasn't me. Probably Bella's mortal tummy begging for food when all I wanted was for her to beg me to eat her out after I carried her, bridal style, to the bed.

Ever the gentleman, I sought to appease her gurgling stomach before my own insatiable craving, "I could make you something to eat, if you're hungry. Mushroom ravioli? Or I could just jump in Volvo and pick something up?" _Perhaps some shroom brownies to move this thing on a bit faster?_

"Um, that wasn't my stomach, Edward, that was me." She blushed crimson red and would have stumbled over her feet to land face first at my crotch had I not been bracing her up against the marble column of my form. _Dammit!_

_Shit! She growled at me? That is so hot. _

"I want you in me now," Bella pronounced, her inner wanton woman unleashed.

Shredding her panties, I sniffed them headily before I hid them amongst my stack of designer clothes…_mine._

Laying Bella on her creaking single bed, thankful Shotgun Charlie was working the night shift, I crawled up her body, lethal and predatory. I caressed her pussy with my long piano player's fingers, circled inside and found that hidden pleasure point, pressed on it until she was spilling, good and wet and greedy.

The fruity scent of ripe strawberries followed on waves as she bashed her head from side to side and thrashed her pelvis around my delighting hand.

My cock clasped in one hand as I spread her thighs with my other, I steadied myself and huskily whispered, "Love, just tell me if this hurts. I Do Not Want To Cause You Pain."

"It's okay_. I'm ready_. You won't hurt me," Bella encouraged me with her words and her hips that swiveled up.

Howling as I entered her heated swollen embrace, I made my way further, inch by long long inch.

With my lips to her ear, I quietly impelled her to breathe and watched as a wall of pain flashed across her face, making me halt just at the beginning of her maidenhead.

While she grew used to my girth, I held still as death above her, my forearms on either side of her head. Once her heart settled into a steadier pace and her face relaxed, I shifted forward again, breeching her virginity with one fell swoop!

Hissing, I knew the full onslaught of love and sex commingling! A juicy torrid purchase held me strictured, and I all but bellowed, "You're so tight, baby!"

"_Umph_, Edward, your shaft is so big, so good, baby," her voice and those utterances nearly sent me over the edge.

Small red droplets of her blood stained the sheets like Rorschach blots. The scent of her sex and her spilled blood made me move with more frenzy and I gripped her hips and plunged in and out.

_Clair de Lune_ tinkled in the background.

Tolling just the plumpened head of my member into her damp folds, pulling it out so that she could feel my skin ruching against hers, just at her engorged entrance, I asked, "How're you liking my foreskin now?"

"_Unghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"_ Bella shouted as she draped her slim calves over my hips and dug her heels into my backside, propelling me back into her with more power than I should have used!

'_S'what I thought. _

Racing towards the finish line, I needed Bella to climax with me.

Holding onto the headboard above her face that was emblazoned with the call of desire, I demanded, "Cum with me! Cum NOW, Bella!" as I traced ever-cinching circles over her clit to help her along.

I came in three long spurts as her walls clamped down on me, milking my twitching cock, screaming savage incoherencies! Biting the pillow so a full-on flurry of feathers drifted about us as our bodies lashed and latched onto each other, I shattered the cringing iron headboard into splinters and metallic dust!

When her pounding heart sank into mere traipsing pitter pats, Bella licked my throat and kissed my Adam's apple and shuddered twice more against me, "So good, Edward."

Looking at her through a veil of long lashes, my eyes strobing back from black to melting amber, I deadpanned, "Do you think you can deepthroat, Bella?"

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**~~So, I hope you laughed a bit and got to know Edward's foreskin up close and personally. **REVIEW?** I am utterly beholden to all y'all that are reading these, honestly. All I can say is WOW! I reply to _everyone _for all my fics, so if you wanna' know what I think and how much I adore your words, punch that R-button.~~**

** I am writing a fucklot in addition to this, and would be even more enamored if you'd check out my other stories.  
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**Mirror is next. Edward, Bella and what could have been. Be prepared for beauty.**

**PS. Sorry for any formatting discrepancies between my chapters, ff is being a fucker.  
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	6. Mirror

**The Twilight Twenty-Five  
**Prompt: 10. Mirror  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: Edward/Bella  
Rating: M

**Vi, cheers, my love, for your super-fab, super fast beta skills, and getting rid of 'that' time and again!**

**Disclaimer: Although this perhaps should have been, it was not. So SM owns the original, while I stake claim to this.**

**~~Robin, DSotM Edward made me do this~~ **

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**10. Mirror**

**Circa 2066**

**Forks, Washington**

**Edward**

We'd returned to the one place that was the embodiment of home. Our small cottage in the meadow where I had initially shown Bella my glistening gem-like skin on a day that would either have meant her untimely demise, or the beginning of her understanding of what I really was. The earthly, ethereal pull between us was a force I was too anxious, too starving for her blood, at that point, to recognize as prophetic. Then, I was always one half second away from sticking my incisors in a stippling pattern against her béchamel neck. That I staved off the savage impulse was a testament to our enchantment even in our foundling days when I stumbled over words, wanting to touch, aching to taste. Gauche, juvenile, lethal.

Each time I met her, I died a bit. And was reborn one molecule of graciousness at a time. Sitting too close to her in the field that was an ocean of spring blossoms shifting like capped waves to the waft of air teasing up Bella's flighty Chesapeake hair and smelting out the chaotic scent of her blood that incinerated my insides, I allowed her to touch me. With reverence, not shyness or clumsiness, her hand trembled. The first sweep over my forearm and up to the slightest gap of skin hollowing my throat caused my eyes to close. Better than the brush of the warm sun when I stood alone, unclothed, on sunny days such as this, here in same spot.

The intonation of her capering stroke hushed me with what felt like it could be…love? And filled my mouth with the rush of tangy poison, a taste of what could become murder.

It felt divine. It made me sinister.

She was so right. And all wrong. The duality of _us_: me wanting to damage and throttle and drink; love, last, protect! Bella, a mixture of bashful and strong, old and wise and an ingénue, closed off from me through her impermeable thoughts yet opening her soul through words she didn't want to speak, and the most soulful brown eyes that played out all of her emotions like writ word to paper.

She gasped, not at the iciness, nor at the flickering luminescence, but at the rightness of it all. _And she called me beautiful._

Not scared, undaunted, Bella had no idea how close she was to dying! My hands could caress. Long, tapered talented fingers doubled as weapons and could just as easily slide through her buttery skin to squash her to a pulpy mess of heaving frothy liquid.

I was pulled inside-out. Right-side-in. I tucked there. _In_, attempting to be right, righteous, wanting her to be my salvation rather than the nail to my revolting coffin.

Pulling back, placing her sun-hewn hands palms down to the ground and away from my flesh that rippled like a human man's beneath her wash, I sat back, crouching on my heels. One step away from predatory stance because it was too fucking good, too much curled up inside me and I could not dissect the need for corporeal affection from the yearning to quash her heart in my fist!

Because her scent drove me wild, her blood the most celestial ambrosia that forged a divining rod of my body, I leaned closer again. Midday sun lengthened the shadow I stole across her wide-open face. Looming closer, I noted her eyes dilating, the scaling up of her breaths, the twitch of her blousy mouth that opened a scant bit. So beautiful. I wanted to bite her.

I wanted to be able to love her.

What warped instinct propelled Bella to thrust herself upon me, to close the gap between our upright bodies, to drape herself like the warmest linen over me while my eyes blackened, my teeth whettened, my neck straining to the side and away from her when all I wanted to do was lunge down and take her, I would never know!

The rosebuds of her lips crept closer, the veins in her milky skin traced faster like highways, a racing torrent. A quick torment. Fingers lifted and I detailed the pale half moons of her nails, every second stopped from the shutter of a camera. _Flash. _Life? _Flash. _Death.

A sickening replay of _He loves me, he loves me not._ Worse: _Will he kill me, will he not._

This was no mere child's game!

I never believed Bella did not understand the exact measure of menace she put herself into that day. The proportion of my growing affection she vastly overrated to the lapsed cruel hunger for what I could only describe as the best concoction of heroin to a diehard junkie.

She was _never_ safe, not that day.

A hairsbreadth away from my mouth that had sneered back like a lion's ready to pounce, one fleeting though cosseted Bella: _I was alive still because I was meant to meet her._

Not to kill her. Not to eat from her. But to love her.

And she would live, because this crash between us, a hot glacial overlapping thing, was bigger than my appetite. _Most of the time._

Brutally intact, I could either slice her to hash or fly away from her. Hell had no pain on this decision that I mulled over, minutely to the human eye. Hands clenched, jaw a thing of distaste, foully wrenching each reaching muscle one at a time away from her succulent pursed mouth that I could as soon kiss as devour, I ran to the treeline. I fucking flew up the mountain, ingested deep breaths of bracingly clean Bella-free air, caught it in my torso, held my breath, and sped back.

Dawdling, delaying, denying another pulse of inhalation, one more close encounter, I teased and cajoled at my most fatal from the perimeter of the wood. _I could love you, kill you, eat you, leave you for dead. I could live with you forever, make you mine, treasure you, pleasure you, and still touch you._

I _wanted_ to alarm Bella!

Breathy spatters of scant fright flowed to me, my position shifting so as not to be engulfed by her presence fully. A devious thing, I gallivanted from tree bow to center meadow to the far end and back to the trees.

_You should run screaming, shout to the hills! Never to return._

I slowed. Optimistic that she understood her vitality made me virile and villainous all at once, I took in Bella-tainted air in small bits. A little more, the closer I came.

My reasoning was flawed. She did not flinch, her brow didn't even furrow! Holding her hand out in acceptance of the creature I was, Bella welcomed me back!

I fell. Never to be lifted up again.

Flayed open, guts spilling, heart trying to beat, I clasped her hand.

Laid bare, all of my barren waste, I just wanted the simplicity of her chaste embrace.

Her fragrant blood suddenly had nothing on her touch.

_I_ was the lamb to the slaughter.

She could have been no one else's. I was only meant to live, to linger through a century of goring disease and boredom and minutiae, to be Bella's.

Exact and undeniable and true.

We bartered a truce. And it was never easy, in those first years.

On the precipice of death, at my hands or those of Jasper, _once_, or my rivals of warring factions and vampire royalty, Bella's life swung from a noose, just this side of suffocation.

Many times I thought I could not save her. Once I left her.

The remembrance of those months was something I would never recount. Scurrilous hate and hurt and agony. Mine and hers. _I would never go there again._

I could have killed Bella, a thousand-fold instances in rapacious very detailed ways.

_I could have killed her._

But I never did.

_I. Never. Did._

I never did.

I wavered but would not capitulate.

I glared death in the eye, and pounded it back.

Bella fueled me. Took away my fear. Replenished me. Made me mightier, more wholesome.

Beget passion in the place of blood lust.

At first she begged. Pleaded, with Alice her cheerleader, for me to make her a soulless monster.

Through most of Bella's twenties, unreal love was swirled up into a hurricane of hurtful emotions at my refusal; tension, anger, full throaty fury fouling up into heated fights.

Within this tempest one tether kept us strong. Our bond to each other had caused me to cross time, to become undead, to make her acquaintance and make her mine in the only way I would.

As my lover.

We married. Simply wed, we made love as if for the first time.

Resplendent ferocity and crush of flesh. Archaically bound to my wife, I adulated Bella with my body as I had with my _beat-still-beat-hush_ heart. Soft and slow, hard and fast, I did not have to overpower instinct, as Bella controlled me blissfully, erotically.

Sensuality, sexually, scintillatingly, we were coiled to each other in one more manner.

That no man, or beast, could sunder.

It felt like Bella's desire alone to become a vampire would hasten her away from me nonetheless.

It pained me most horrifically to deny Bella this thing she was so dead-set on, but my resolve never flagged, not even when I was threatened with the gutting brutal idea that we may never make it beyond this loggerhead.

Thus, Bella's first birthdays as my wife were more like funereal marches with her moping in bereavement for another year passing while the rest of us wanted to celebrate. Inwardly, I rejoiced! A woman, a human, my mate, she would breathe! Outwardly, I demonstrated my bliss**, **caving to every bone shattering cataclysmic carnal craving; my flesh and hers conjoined as echoes of ecstasy reverberated like chorales.

This fractious idea of me changing Bella instead of her getting older whilst I remained like a statue that not even the elements could bite was a splinter embedded in the soft tissue of her soul. Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, that shard worked its way to the surface and flittered away like the downy fluff from a cattail on an autumnal breeze.

By her twentieth annum with me, a strange thing happened. Colliding hotly, my untouched love founds its true match inside of Bella, and she changed. Into a woman. One who was finally complete within her own skin. Revolutions of the sun had wrought our evolving emotion into such a thing, an infinite whorl circling the vast cosmos and finally, we grew together! Learned and loved. Loved and succored each other fruitfully.

And age did not fucking matter.

I would always be older than Bella. And she would be the one of us that changed through the passage of our scribbling lives that became a manifesto to the intensity of our connection. Ultimately that was an eventuality Bella accepted.

I was going nowhere.

Never.

This enormous respite, this earth-shattering tongue-tied web laughed at the universe, made an untouchable fine veil around us. Shielding us, just as Bella's mind preternaturally protected her.

Over and over, I thanked the immortals, the higher beings, the ones who had put this profound plan into action.

We moved on. Splendid and luxurious and _living._ Travel and study and work and through it all, family.

In the end it didn't matter that people stared, talked or whispered. We never pretended to be mother and son or grandmother and grandson. We were each other's first, last, _forever_. Majestic and powerful, there was appreciation for the masterpiece of the way we moved together from those who truly beheld us.

Blessed by the only good thing Renee had ever bestowed upon Bella, she had flourished from shy and self-aware to stately and elegant and assured. Ever more stunning! I never longed for our early days, as each dawn there was a new slightly altered Bella to watch, caress, listen to. Her body as well as her mind transformed. No longer a titmouse, Bella matured. As she never would have, had I halted her growth with my toxin.

The way her skin changed through her ages, a flawless beauty whose surface aesthetically met the tick tock of years that marked their path in little sprinkles of tiny lines bespeaking of laugh, love, all the hours we spent together.

_That_ was divinity.

And she made me into a man.

Now, settled into our little abode that we had fashioned ourselves, housing our scant worldly goods – we had nearly everything we needed in each other alone – we sat wrapped around each other in our bedroom. This haven was our touchstone. And this was where we would begin again.

Through the years, Alice had systematically excised all her future visions of Bella from playing into her mind. Fully realizing this day would come, we did not want to know when.

Bella sat on the plush peony pink bench before the antique cherry vanity, facing the mottled mirror and smiling at me in reflection as I held her against my body, brushing out her locks that were still full, crackling with static electricity. All wavy and lush and the same but for the sterling white of the strands.

The cadence of her heart, my swelling sanctuary, had begun to slow.

Charlie was gone. Renee, Phil, laid to rest. Our high school friends scattered.

All that was of import was right here in my arms.

The rest of our family, Rosalie and Emmett, Alice and Jasper, Esme and Carlisle, and now Peter and Charlotte were close by. In the same white Victorian house that could only be found if you knew where to look, at the end of a mile-long alley of giant feathery oaks.

They'd said their goodbye's already.

We reminisced. Kissed softly. Stroked devotedly. Had I known then, I would not have squandered time. It slipped by so fast, in comparison to the decades that had bored me….before Bella.

We regretted nothing.

We had succeeded in the unthinkable. We had grown old together.

I may not have aged, on the surface, but I had learned so much more, in my heart.

Within me, within Bella.

Even now, she did not wilt. She blossomed!

Her time was my time. I had met each year with a new creak to my knees, a crick to my neck, as if I were mortal.

The one thing that didn't ebb was our passion.

"I'm dying now, Edward," Bella's lips like full peaches halved over my own to whisper simply.

"I know love," I held her closer, tighter than ever before, tangling my fingers into her tresses, turning my mouth to her neck and feeling the filaments of seconds trespassing. "I am too. I'll be right behind you."

I was ready.

Done.

About to begin again.

Full.

Filled.

All our earthly love would now find a home in the hinterlands beyond.

Love.

_Love._

_Love._

_I love you._

_I love you._

_I am following._

_A lamb._

_To pasture._

_With you, Bella._

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**~~Need a Kleenex? What's your favorite thus far?~~**

**Awkward will be coming up, featuring two characters we've not seen much of And that's all I'm sayin'.**


	7. Awkward

**The Twilight Twenty-Five**  
Prompt: 02. Awkward  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: Garrett/Kate  
Rating: M-YUMMY

**Vi, you the beta queen deluxe version! Ta so much.**

**Disclaimer: Hells yes this is mine. Twilight, alas, is **_**hers.**_

**~~A/N Garrett was turned during The Revolutionary War. As per the Lexicon. Here he is~~**

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**02. Awkward**

**Circa 2006**

**Forks, Washington**

**Garrett**

The dour, dirge-like atmosphere that rained over the Cullens' impressive household and its keepers was infectious. Festering. Filling the surroundings with inescapable fraught fear and tension.

Swinging on tenterhooks, meathooks, we awaited the heralded arrival of the Volturi and their soldiers. The heavy air moist with anticipation was akin to hearing of defeat after defeat whispered through lines of us Minutemen as we stood at the ready, felling trees in the path of British Redcoats. Slowing their reinforcements and shitting ourselves for the skirmish that was to come.

This entire setting was claustrophobic. We gathered vampires walked on fragile eggshells as Bella and Edward barely held their forthcoming grief in check. I watched on, warily, as their lives, their timeless love threatened to crumble around them.

Rubbing my hand over my chest, I scanned the looming sylvan forest for a brief escape.

The flush greenery that sought to melt away the approach of cold and snow sprinkled the sky with foliage turned into icicles.

Edward and Bella hurt my eyes.

There was nowhere to hide from the saddened form of their huddled family; a brave face here and there, a joke and a laugh could not diminish the doom that winged over them so softly yet harshly. Snow flurries turning into a blizzard.

Emmett alone provided comic relief amongst the congress of unusual vampires who had amassed at the call of the Cullens. His bold jesting and bright boyish demeanor would have put him at home in the Teutonic biergartens during October Fest.

A nomad, a no-man, I remained because of this call to arms, much as I had known as a militiaman in the Continental Army, volunteering my future to the Continental Congress. Fatally wounded at Saratoga, I should have died on the battlefield; a lowly infantryman with only my musket, my canteen half-emptied, my peacock blue coat and spit-shined boots. And my hopes for freedom on the frontierland.

What I was served instead was an unforgiving, damned everlasting eternity. Not at the hands of the turncoats, but beneath the incisors of a tribe of Iroquois vampires. As they plied their teeth upon my flesh, more sharp than their glinting tomahawks that had most likely seen untold scalps, I did not cry, scream, or beg. I was a man of honor.

Then a man of horror.

And now a fighter in a new army.

I didn't like our chances, but I always was one for the cause of the underdog.

Battling for the just right to live in liberty as was the founding edict of this country. I'd waged war for it once, and now I would do so again. Birthright. I'd be damned if the tripe-skinned Volturi were going to pillage existence from this group, this _family_, from little Renesmee who was a bright promise, growing, maturing, learning and changing with each passing day!

To the Volturi demons, her naissance was no more than an excuse for decimation. Much like the Boston Tea Party was a pretext to invade the red-headed stepchild that was the rebellious American outpost.

They were no better than the colonizing British Crown.

Imperialistic motherfuckers.

And their legionnaires were little more than the fickle Loyalists I had killed, kicked and maimed on fields that ran red with blood.

Alice and Jasper…were they really just yellow-bellied Benedict Arnolds?

A man of action, I needed to fight, fuck, keep moving, always seeking a new challenge, I had never lost my pioneering spirit.

I would always be a Patriot.

The child-like bleating of a fawn in the throes of death followed by a lilting titter rushed to me.

_Katrina._

_She_ was a challenge.

The others called her by her Americanized name, but I preferred Katrina. She was exotic, Russian by birth, black-haired and never losing the foreign ply of her mother tongue, a song to seduction like that of a siren. I could well believe her reputation as a succubus. Delicately featured, I imagined her eyes had been Siberian blue as a mortal. Her cheeks still held a skein of pink flush, her lips deepest red as rich velvet drapery. And to be sure, just as soft. The point of her chin, the bow of her mouth, the tip of her nose to the unveiled widow's peak at her forehead all created a Matryoshka doll-like vision of gorgeousness. Neither tall nor short, her body was like a ripe pear. Skin as juicy and succulent as that fruit, the fibrous flesh of her ass was round and would be nearly a handful. Her breasts were buoyant, and I wondered, often, if her nipples were as crimson as her lips. Underneath it all was the strength of a hundred men, the power of twenty vampires, the lives of a millennium.

She was comely, for an older lass. Having been around since the 11th century, I had no doubt that she could teach me a lesson or two. And I was an apt pupil.

Tightening the leather lashing around my seashore hair, I followed Katrina into the foothills.

I adjusted my loose leather trousers, my billowing white shirt, the pannier of my package as it sat upon the seam of my pants. My dick growing larger with every step I took toward her.

There was no point softening my footfalls.

My shadow fell over her like the timber I had cursed earlier. Scraping her eyes from the pile of drained suede mincemeat at her side, Katrina looked me over, visually toppling me with her Klondike eyes I was still getting acquainted with.

Being a carnivore amongst vegetarians, I was interested in the manner the Cullens and the Denalis feasted from animals alone.

At this moment, I was much more keen on Katrina's masted, satiated, yet hungering eyes that strolled up my ropey muscles, shown through the parted lashings of my blouson, over my neck that was arched to the side in equal appreciation of her, and landing in the depths of my vermilion, aroused gaze.

I was no popinjay, but her languorous appraisal made me stand straighter, and my dick rise higher.

Lifting in a sliver-pounce to the balls of her feet, Katrina advised me, "Garrett, _lubimuy_, I think you should keep your distance." A crest of want flushed her chest, seemingly she alone of our kind held onto that very sensual, feminine impulse.

She schemed and retreated as I pressed closer.

_Well, this is curious._ I could read scat, footprints, track prey and predator alike, I knew without doubt she was attracted to me. Why did she feel it necessary to impugn me?

One step away from her, I leant back. Her hand raised to scant millimeters from my chest cautioned me. A current of electricity lit the air between us. A racing arc of blue-green jetting out from the tips of her fingers to the shielding tide before my body. Pure inches of air kept me safe from her touch.

I knew she was strong, I'd watched her work with Bella in an attempt to strengthen the formidable weapon of her shield, but Katrina's electrical impulse had never been discernible before.

Garbed in a long gauzy skirt that fitted through her nubile hips and thighs just reaching the top of her knees, where tall patent leather boots were ribboned up her legs in the most sexy lacings, a blouse that dipped down over the cupping hills of her tits before it breezed out in a triangle from the northern wind, which quickly shredded cold amongst what had been a heated winter day, Katrina was clear, distinct, a single still picture in all the paltry adventures that made up my life.

I wanted her.

Pulling the twine from my hair, I wrapped it around my forearm. And observed Katrina's eyes rising with each thread over the sinews of my arm up to my bicep. The thong slid down when I released it, and I caught it between my fingers, nervous activity, whipped it across the air like a lariat, exactly as her charge had racked between us.

The whir of leather into crispening air was loud. To us.

My voice, when I asked, was rugged, deepening as a squall at sea, a gale, "Whyever is that, Katrina?"

Wind braced us closer together. Twining a tight hold about us, it seemed to know my need and her disapproval. Let loose, my hair filtered, flittered with the jet straight tresses of hers. Black, sienna. We were locked together.

The wimple over her mane fled back to an oaken copse. I made as if to race after it, but she stilled me. Not with her hand, but with the idea of those fingers upon me. She met only air. Not once touching me. Armed in a force field as formidable as Bella's, which she'd had centuries of practice to hone, Katrina halted me with the idea of contact.

Her heavy gilt orthodox cross swung like a carriage's light between her breasts before it nestled in the creamy illumined valley.

"What is this?"

Stepping back, Katrina enclosed herself with her arms, like a cage. She laughed, but it was short, curt and not at all a funny thing, "In case you hadn't noticed, _dorogoy_, I tend to shock the hell out of people!"

Two steps forward to her one step back, I was close on her toes, "That's what I like about you."

Exasperated, she huffed and puffed and stalked away and paced back, always careful to keep at least a small gap between us, and I wanted her more than ever.

That subtle blush upon her cheeks heightened, her glorious tits near but fell out of her top with the strident breaths she stole, "It's more of a hindrance in physical relationships. I can't control myself _in the heat of the moment._ If you know what I mean. Affairs never end well…which is fine with the passing stranger, the ne'er-do-well, but I can't allow that with you." Shaking her head side to side, her eyes were suddenly sudsy and turmoiled.

I nodded and capitulated but was not one bit put off.

Making a lasso of my neck lace, I manacled Katrina. Pulling her, centimeter by centimeter, by her wrist, I brought her to me so her nipples and mine were helpmeets just this slightly apart, when I bent my knees.

"Garrett, _detka_, you are seeing this, yes?"

I nodded as she traced phosphorescent spirals in the air between us, the intensity of her drawings pulling my cock ever closer to her sweet hot-cold hidden pussy.

I felt tazers in my groin as I settled my erection between her thighs. Lifting her skirt, bunching the flimsy material in both hands and skimming it all along her legs, I shuddered as voltage scurried into my fingers.

Her head fell back, her neck an unlocked treasure chest. I bit her bottom, full and fleshy, with my hands. Licked her throat from collarbone to chin and took a breath before I laved her lips.

Amps tickled my mouth, watts crinkled my fingertips.

On a gasp and with a jolt, Katrina crept a hand up between us in separation. The gusts of her voice were more shorted-out wires, "It's never been this strong before. A transparent thing of hurt, my charge had never been so detectable!"

Licking my lips and prowling into her ratified air once more, I beat back her fiery crackle and asked, siphoning her strength with my being, "So, you've actually shocked a vampire while screwing him?"

My frown was of curiosity meeting envy.

A smile dimpled her cheeks as she shook her head, all the while assenting, "Vampires, men, toys, toy-boys…"

"Whoa! Back up, woman. What? How the- _What?_ Your reputation as a succubus-"

Opening the lacings of her silken shirt, Katrina brought kilowatts of lightning with her stimulating footsteps, "I didn't say I don't have sex, Garrett. Just that the men I bed are not often left in postcoital glory."

Underneath her blouse, her tits were bare. Like apples! Again with the blush that must have been a side effect of her energetic impulse. Pure light pink raw satiny tips were barely anchored to the ivory swells of her breasts. I slunk closer, feeling heat permeating the chasm between us, meeting her engorged pretty nipples with my tongue I muttered, an aside, "Well, this could be awkward."

Heated joules and ramping copper conductors pulled venom from my cheeks to wet her breasts, and her heart felt like it was beating!

Shaken, swearing, Katrina swayed until I laid her flat on the frosted over ground.

Pushing me back to my knees, again distancing us, she warned me one more time, "Do you want to feel what you do to me?" With the black curtain of her gleaming hair as dark as night hiding then revealing and then secreting away her breasts and shoulders and the sensual shape of her back curved in to her waist, out to her handful of hips, Katrina queried while I mutely nodded.

Holding her hand between us, she inclined until it was an inch from my ribs. Halting, she demanded that I disrobe. Making quick work of my clothing, I settled back to the earth. My breath choppy, accelerating.

No longer hesitant, Katrina laid her hand over my muscled ribs, her digits digging into the divots of flesh between bones. and I was immediately laid back to the ground beneath the surge of her electricity licking from where she touched outwards to my fingertips, down to my toes before settling, like searing fire, in my groin!

The transient venom inside of me flooded down to my own power source and my cock solidified into a monumental obelisk.

Hypnotized by her stoking fingers that tracked an invisible barrier over my naked skin, a warning flare went off in the back of my mind, but I ignored it. Not disheartened in the least.

Her caresses continued to leap across the air that separated us before sending up gooseflesh when her hands, her lips, her talented tongue journeyed the sloping muscles of my torso, into the pool of my navel, sucking hungrily at the canyon of sinew that separated my hips from the muscles of my lower stomach.

My legs twitched, my hands clenched and unclenched, the fine wheaten hairs all over me raised. Jerking my pelvis to the air, I growled while Katrina's weapon-like stroke conquered my inner thighs. An alarm was sent out from her reaching fingertips at every landmark she explored like the signals from Paul Revere's Midnight Ride, lantern-lit steeples, and hell if each spark didn't turn me on more!

Finally her succotash mouth sipped at the head of my cock, her tongue lapped all around the underside and licked at the frenulum. I watched her through eyes that could scarcely focus, but my eyelids slammed shut as the fullness of her mouth made a wet conveyance up and down my shaft. There was an intense crackle as she zapped me, and I fell back breathlessly laughing, "I don't care if you electrocute me, Katrina, I want you!"

This was the Rubicon.

"Point of no return, Garrett," she kept on running her full mouth up and down the straining sides of my cock, I was slippery with her poison and the spillage of cum that dripped from my head. "I can't promise this won't hurt."

With one hand tangled in her tresses that were yet more singe and sizzle, I fisted the other around my cock and mimicked the river of her saliva, shoving my index finger between her parted lips.

"Now, _please_, Katrina!"

Sucking on my finger as well as the top of my erection, she hissed through her mouthful before sliding free. Laying out the rubric, Katrina crouched above me and let me know how we were going to conduct this fucking, "This is how we do it then, Garrett. I'm on top, I'm in charge, _literally_. Are you ready?" A naughty half-smile played her pursed mouth, her eyes turned to charcoal and tumbleweed.

She held herself above me. Sank incrementally over me, and each inch was a jolt that joined us; flesh to livewire.

My tongue to her swollen nipples, my fingertips running across the liquid of her mouth, I moaned and suctioned off small amps of power.

Breaking free, Katrina bowed back, grabbed my thighs and danced deliciously atop me!

My pulse, a thing powered of old, a steam engine, rang like percussive strikes on a glockenspiel. The erotic sway of her was intense, shocking to be sure, but also like the small soft touches of tinny instrumental hammers as she tightened and plunged and released and disclosed my shaft, which had never been harder.

She lapsed in and out of Russian, and I didn't understand a damn thing of it, but I knew the amping up of her moans that were met by my own throaty growls, "Garrett, ooooh, your _khren_…."

Flayed, chaff, frayed, thrashed.

I exploded and screamed and held her by her hips tight on my cock as my ass jumped up from the ground!

Stars burst, constellations and shooting meteors, my orgasm was the shot heard round the world!

I was made into rubble.

Katrina cooed and cuddled me and surprisingly her power had ebbed.

So the crack we heard did not come from her.

War was approaching.

Wrapped in an igloo of goodbyes, Edward and Bella and Renesmee gathered courage amidst snowdrifts that had fallen while Katrina and I fucked.

The brutal Nor'easter of the Volturi was nigh.

_God, please let us all survive this._

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**~~WOW! Y'all are so incredible for all of your love and reviews. Crave is coming soon, I'll just say..._Edward_, *le sigh*~~**

**Dead Confederates has made it to the final round of voting for The Fainthful Shipper Awards. (Favorite Author – Canon, AU, AH, Best AU, and the man himself for Best Character that is OOC)! Voting ends Oct. 13****th****. Go to thefaithfulshipperawards(DOT)webs(DOT)com(SLASH)finalvotinground(DOT)htm**

**So, yes, Incarcerated is coming to its close soon too, and there will be fresh funny as FUCK DC'S next week. **

**Leave me love, as I am fuck-all writing and could always use the inspiration!  
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	8. Crave

**The Twilight Twenty-Five  
**Prompt: 3. Crave  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: Edward (Bella)  
Rating: M for oh MY god!**  
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**Vi, you're kind of brilliantly awesome with your research and mad beta work! V, ta for your Chicago information!**

**Disclaimer: SM owns stuff.**

**~~Happy Birthday, Mer~~**

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**Crave**

**Circa 1918**

**Chicago**

**Edward**

I was seventeen years old, for goodness sake! This should not seem such a task. An adolescent, really a man, ready to be conscripted and sent center stage into the perils of The Great War, I had yet to know a woman's caress. Nor even my own touch upon my manhood.

Desiring to be less straight-laced, indecently overpowered time and again by the scandalous thoughts of women, both young and old, educated and monied, impoverished and lowly, who galloped so devilishly through my head at a steady clip-clop pace with every passing glance, the idea of _masturbating_ left a foul unacceptable taste in my mouth.

But my body had a mind of its own! Virginal, having never been so much as kissed chastely by a girl, I was horrified as my penis ached and grew and solidified, tenfold times a day.

I began to think I was not normal.

In fact, I _knew_ I was not typical. Aside from my father and my upbringing, everything about me was unconventional. My mother, though proper, was flamboyant, a vision, visionary. Nee Eliza Anthony, a gypsy from a long line of soothsayers, she met my uppercrust Chicagoan father at a fair. Her family's caravans circled the grounds just as she moseyed through the crowds selling bouquets of wildflowers and tempting fortunes. My father, whose Christian name I share, was taken instantly as her touch upon his palm told of their future together. A grand love that rebounded against societal strictures, they would not be outdone, never to be outshone. The steadfastness, the luxuriousness of their feeling laid waste to the Masen family claims that Eliza was from disreputable stock. Their disapproval gave way to relenting acceptance. A man not be thwarted, Edward laid his claim, fast and true, and they were married within the year of 1900.

I wanted that!

A newlywed at twenty-two, my father came into ownership up of Masen Furriers when his own father died. Eliza was always stoled in capes of mink and the finest wrappings replacing the gauzy brilliantly hued shawls she had been handed-down before. At first disapproving of a less than fortuitous love match, his family came to regard lately christened Elizabeth as one of their own. Over time, she did not so much change as afford others the opportunity to adapt to her. With humor and welcoming arms, hospitality that knew no match, a generous heart that made her a deft hand at all the city's philanthropic projects, she grew to a respected society lady, invested in the innards of Chicago. Sitting on the board of its museums, hospitals, and orphanages, she held all in thrall with her sparkling free spirit and exotic wit.

Prodigious on the piano, tuned to the inner workings of near everyone, I came across as detached from most, the opposite of my mother. Through my innate athleticism, my prowess at lacrosse and fencing, I formed a few lasting friendships with boys my age who were far more experienced and worldly than I. Beguiled by their stories of flirtation and courting, I listened to their spoken words as well as looked into their minds' eyes. Mostly they told tall tales that did not fold true with the erotic dealings they described.

Remaining an outsider, set apart, I was often unsettled in my own body.

The only refuge I knew was my mother. Never once smothering me, giving me space and time and encouragement, she was more a companion than anything else. In need of simple distraction, we often sat in the plaza of Lincoln Park while the wind whipped up a gale from Lake Michigan. I looked low, to the feet in heeled leather boots, brogues, the sweep of skirts, the hooves of horses, the wheels of conveyances. Passing me by. People watching. Innocuously sharing insights. In those moments only was my aptitude, met by that of my mum, a thing of jollity.

Father knew. He never disproved, but this fine wire of a thing that allowed give and take of notion put him ill-at-ease. Discomfited him.

Shaking her head fiercely, Mother reached across the bench and held my hand. She wanted me to find love, but not like this. Not because my appearance was a beacon to lewd, cheap thoughts. So much like her own, my hair flashed a new copper penny flicked from thumb and middle finger into the fountain centerpiece of the square. The Rainier of my green eyes flecked out beneath long black lashes as I tried to ignore, and catch sight of, the women whose thoughts feasted on my form. Always pale, even otherworldly, I never fit in with the neighborhood boys who were kissed by the sun's rays. _Tall, fit, good looking, chiseled, odd, _those were all descriptions I heard, silently, of myself. Oftentimes it was too much! Aside from outings with my mates Whit, and Carty, I hermited myself away.

I was my mother's son through and through except I lived inside, and she cascaded gloriousness over everyone she met.

Portentously frightened of my death, Elizabeth abhorred my enlistment. Even as she prepared my uniforms and kit, she hungered over me in supplication. "Edward, I understand that you need to go out on your own. _Please_ reconsider this! University awaits you. You may go as far away to school as you like, just…_don't do this,_" she pleaded.

Then, complied as my fortitude remained undimmed.

Supported my decision and closed down her mind.

Seeking to leave her heartache behind before time, I caroused with Whit and the lads. Clacked glasses and watched, from afar, as they paired up with women who were too facile for my taste.

It wasn't as if my body did not answer the call of the beautiful women surrounding me. But there was such a thing as proper. _And this was anything but._

Above all? I longed for silence from such rapacious thoughts.

I fancied there was something more for me. That beyond the steps of our sprawling brownstone in the Gold Coast district the woman who would be my timeless love was awaiting my erstwhile appearance, just as I was anticipating her presence.

Perhaps I would find _it_, discover myself, decode my imaginings overseas. Stumble upon _her._

The woman who invaded my sleep and caused my restless tendencies.

With just under a month until my call-up date, I craved to be less tight-laced, less stiff. My friends, future servicemen, taunted me, laughing I would go off to war a virgin, and probably die one too.

I wanted the first time I made love to be with my wife.

Remaining like a hulking great chunk of granite from the quarry, the very idea of touching myself, for pleasure and release, was rather shocking. This was not something to query Father over. I blushed and shook my head at the thought. _That _would not do. Kind, a worthy humanitarian, gallant and handsome, Edward was a sharp, astute, intelligent and passionate man. Nevertheless, certain lines were not to be overstepped, and these things were not spoken of.

Blessed, or cursed, with my mother's rhododendron locks, her ivy eyes, and bits of her traits and quirks, I gained my proud bearing, my tall stature, my lean muscled physique and carved features from my father. My sometimes confidence, my lapsed carefree attitude were hers, my oftentimes aloof yet concerned nature his.

With a fortnight left before being shipped overseas, I begged off from my fellow carousers.

At home, the evening invariably ended with us three in the parlor.

After finishing a nightcap to talk of cheers, thanks and determined gaiety, my parents waltzed beautifully around the cleared space while I played on the piano.

I bit my lip, knew my forehead was scrunched in frown and worry.

The masterpiece I worked upon was filled with longing, love, untold hope.

"What has you so tongue-tied this night, Edward dear?" _If only she knew! _Thankfully, Mum had learned early on to disregard my inner workings except when I invited her in. I bit down hard on my lip that was chapped, chafing it with my tongue, not deigning to speak.

Flushed and flustered and feeling something enormous coming hither, I settled to the cushions of the bench further. It did not help that out of nowhere, an erection grew beneath the pocket of my trousers. I shifted my legs further under the piano casing, pulled the bench up closer, closed my eyes and once more saw the young woman who preternaturally preoccupied me. Whose face, just moments before, had burst behind my eyes and caused the crush of engorgement to my groin! Beginning to tenderize the keys in earnest, I closed my eyes and was swept away again by Chopin's _Nocturne_.

My parents stopped dancing and sat side by side on the sofa, entwined. While I sat alone.

When I finished, my eyes not at all clear, Eliza exclaimed, "Beautiful boy, that was all of you. Edward, you should play more!"

"Son, you do have a gift, we must hold a recital before you go."

Ruffling my hair into a disheveled mess which I hastily rearranged into some semblance of order, Father bid me goodnight. Softer, more tender, Mother kissed my cheek lightly, hugged me tightly, sighing a wish that was both a lullaby and a question: _Where is your love, Edward?_

Their refracting crystal glasses holding drops of amber alcohol at the base repeating rings upon the banquette behind the sofa, Edward and Eliza's whispers strolled up the polished staircase.

And our house was just small enough that I often heard what went on behind their bedroom doors. My saving grace was my music that I threw myself into, and my aptitude at culling unwanted pictures from my head.

I slept little. Either by hindsight or foresight, my dreams were haunted by _trompe l'oeil_ that looked so very real! None of it making sense, an illusion of a time and place that was unrecognizable to me; green, lush, damp, and people I had never seen. As my enlistment neared, one apparition stood out from the others. She came to me alone, and it no longer felt like I was in reverie.

Becoming a frequent visitor to my bedchamber, she caused me to look forward to the long nights that had previously taunted me with insomnia. Of long soft brown tresses and slim body, this hallucination tended to stroll about my room while I observed her through narrowed eyes. Fingering my belongings, riffling through my jumble of books, taking up my watch fob and inspecting its mechanism curiously, all the while seeming as if she were seeking to discover a clue to something.

After several nights in this manner, she cast her first look at me with a long smile and eyes of deep creamy umber. When she walked towards me, lounging beneath the coverlet, I opened the blankets and welcomed her in. Curling against me, scratching my skin with her skirts and stiff blouse, her body was so much warmer than my own. I drifted off to slumber humming a simple tune.

Never did she speak. Never was I able to discern a single thread of her thoughts.

As a parting gift, my mother took me to Swan Lake at The Majestic. Throughout the first half of the performance, seated in our family's private box, I felt someone _other_ scrutinizing me. Taking up the opera glasses I scanned the gathered masses, looking for the mystery woman who was probably no more than a ghost but who felt so empirically real.

_Nothing._

The bell chimed for intermission, and I was bombarded by Elizabeth and a gaggle of feminine frippery, introduced to a surplus of jubilant, clever, striking debutantes who pranced in the more revealing fashions of the time, and even then I found them all lacking. I breathed a sigh of relief when they made their leave with Mother in tow.

Another presence parted the curtains, and I felt pale eyes piercing my back as I quelled the urge to huff in annoyance, but the voice that found air was decidedly masculine, "Do please forgive me, young sir, I seem to have misplaced my party."

Rising from my seat, I swiveled and was keenly off balance as I recognized a man from my deceptive night fantasies! Not only were his eyes the color of a burning yellow wick in an oil lamp, but his hair was platinum and his skin of alabaster. He could not have been much older than me, but he was elegant, assured, and in my dreams he was most definitely a father figure. Clasping the hand he held aloft in apology, I noted his skin was compact and cool. His mind painfully obliterated and blank but for a taste of surprise.

The entire night unsettled me.

Woefully, I longed for silence, succor. To be gone from the familiar, to find my own way.

But first I had to conquer my own body.

I chose my moment wisely. The following afternoon, my mother was volunteering at the hospital, tending to the invalids who overcrowded wards as influenza continued to multiply its menace in our city. My father was of course at the office.

_I closed my door and turned the skeleton key to the right with a satisfying click. Stepping up to my dresser, I let go the thoughts of women that sullied my mind and concentrated solely on my flesh, and the figment femme who came to me. _

_Yearning was most certainly mine. _

_I dropped my silver moneyclip to the polished wood with a metallic clatter. Taking up my brush, I groomed my hair and smoothed it down to an autumnal wave over the crown of my head, parted just so. Smiled at my daftness as I was hardly preparing to go courting, I was simply getting ready to take matters into my own hands. Checking my reflection, I was contented with my cheeks, chin and throat that were still nearly smooth from the midmorning shave I had received at the barber's. Sharply white against my ruddy chapped lips that had been described as thoroughly kissable in many a woman's thoughts, my teeth were straight, bright and clean._

_I flicked open my fitted vest, released my crisp white shirt one button at a time paying special attention to the heirloom cufflinks that held the fabric closed at my wrists and laid those items atop my bureau. Running my hands through my hair, down my neck, my palms flattened over my hard chest and down to my stomach that flinched at first contact, twitched as I stole my hands further over the muscles and fine trail of fiery hair that ran from beneath my navel to my waistband and beyond._

_Unclasping and unlooping my slim belt, I made for the fastening of my trousers. With buttons freed from their eyes, I spread the fabric wide, planted my hands inside, and leant over to shuffle the light rich gabardine down my thickly muscled thighs and my lean carved calves. Under my feet and off my body. _

_Clothed only in my drawers, the shape of my penis hardened, lengthening within the confining yoke held closed by rows of buttons on either side._

_I had a bitemark on my shoulder caused by an unfortunate meeting of teeth and clavicle during a rugby scrum. Rubbing that scar brought an odd frisson of excitement to me._

_Hesitantly I stroked my shaft through the cotton. A small irrepressible moan tore out of me! It felt so much like relief! Pulling the placket open, I wrapped my fist around my cock and helped it through the gap, stealing a glance in the mirror to watch in fascination the purpling taut velvet vein-filled flesh that would fill more than two of my large hands as it grew to full height._

_My head rolled back when I touched just my index finger into the dip that nestled wetly in the center of my hooded penis. Another gut-deep groan ached out of me._

_Buttercream drops lifted out of my shaft._

_I pulled my undergarments down my legs, gasped outright when the hot blossoming head of my flesh furrowed against my abdomen._

_Stepping back from the mirror, I licked my lips, licked my palms, took my cock firmly in both hands and settled down upon the crackling leather divan placed beneath the dormer window of my room._

_Giving myself over easily to the idea of the lovely young lady who stole into my room of a night, who gave me solace and caused me to want, I closed my eyes and gnashed my teeth against further utterances. Pulling up with force, my hips arched up, my buttocks clenched, and I dove one hand onto my sac. My head beat to the side and my breath chopped and my voice belted, "Mother of God!"_

_I needed this. I desired _her._ This timeless lass. Her company. Her body._

_As if I had conjured her, she was suddenly here._

_Drifting into my room, she smelled floral and fruity and sweet. A simple highwaisted calf length skirt trimmed in fur revealed her delicate ankles that made my mouth water. Her clothing was subdued as befitted this time of war. A ruffled blouse held tightly closed with mother of pearl stamps, a braided leather belt, and tiny pewter and diamond studs decorated her small ears, completing her outfit._

_I hadn't heard her. Laid out, fully naked, caressing myself with my hands, I was like a Renaissance sculpture, Nude at Work__. Translucent of step, opaque of mind, she was seated upon the arm of the chaise when I opened my chartreuse eyes._

_A chanteuse, her voice was crystalline and innocent the first time I heard it through my shamed shock at her presence. Her words were anything but guileless, and still I could not fathom her inner thoughts. Making to grab the throw to pull over myself, she interrupted me with words and a hot touch to my wide wrist, "Please don't cease on my account, Edward."_

_Supple words and gestures that were all gamine. And highly indecent. Inappropriate!_

_I gulped down draughts of air, and all I smelled was her._

_Perching at my bare feet, bawdily she asked, "May I touch you first, before you carry on?"_

_At her query a fresh onslaught of desire ramped through me and a new flood of liquid shook my cock in its vertical column._

_Seeing my body's reaction, she laughed brazenly, "I'll take that as a yes."_

_Her talk was singularly peculiar, from her words to her intonation. The verbiage that came out of her was equally innocuous and invasive, casual and somewhat crude to my ears. I felt tawdry, dirty, above all exquisitely aroused!_

_Throwing aside oppressive conscripts, I curtly nodded my head and ceased looking at her for fear of what was to come._

_My forearm crooked over my face. I felt her moving to stand beside me. Held my breath, shifted my hips, sought her touch. A quick hiss and, "Mother of God!" ground out of me; scorching fingers slid from my toes that curled, to my lambent Achilles heels, over ankles and my quaking calves. _

_My body and mind were halved by the sundering pull of 'yes' and 'no'._

_At the tender backside of my knees her fingertips delighted and I bit down hard on my bottom lip, knew my face was caving in with erotic excitement, a fury of passion!_

"_Oh God," I punished out when that softest feather-touch skimmed my inner thighs, rubbed circles in the hair whorled there, and dangled under the firming fermenting pillows my cock sat upon. Melting into the slim line which separated the two sacs, her index finger became roguish, deftly fondling first one and then the other. Cupping both balls neatly in her entire hand, she then used all four fingers to run up my shaft, and her thumb to push into the weeping slit on top._

_Flushed with a skein of blood surging, I felt my cheeks reddening, my hips turning into her lascivious touch, and her own exhalations grew to a flighty thing with her ministrations._

"_What? Why? Who…Oh LORD…who, who are you?" through great quails of breath I questioned her actions and intent._

"_Does it feel good? Are you pleasured, Edward?" She returned hotly._

_Nodding my head madly I acquiesced._

"_Then that's all you need to know." Strictly denying me any respite. _

_I unhooked my arm to watch her. She had loosened the first buttons of her shirtwaist, opening it to the chemise beneath and the hills of her bosom were scallop pink with want. Raising my hand, I pressed it right to those downy hills, tracing the line between and folding up into a bowl around the underside, plucking and pressing her hidden nipple with my thumb._

_Her eyes were now half mast as mine. And even darker._

_Falling forward into my touch, she braced herself on my chest. I shifted again so her other hand sifted yet more perfectly around my shaft. Taking my penis betwixt index and middle finger, the back of her hand sank to my sac and her knuckles dug deep. Seized in her grasp, unwilling to look away from her eager sensual surveillance of my filled-to-bursting organ, I was pulled and pushed and jerked and just this side of Heaven. Just this far gone to Hell. _

_Once I was whipped up to a frenzy, she inexplicably sat back and encouraged me to carry on. _

_But I was too wound up, this was perfectly right._

_I sat up straight and brought her right down over me. The terrapin head of my penis sat directly against her slick wetness that was still demurely covered. I jutted up against her, licked my way up her neck to her lips and kissed her deeply with my mouth, my tongue reaching every erogenous crevice._

_Deliriously this spirit woman swiveled against me and entreated, "Please. Please!" Bold and forward and impudent._

_Her throat arched, denuded of the frothy ruffles at her collar bone, it called forth an exotic hunger for flesh and blood that was no less erotic._

_With swiftness that was not mine, I turned her over, bent her under me, "Like this?"_

"_Yes!"_

_Power, ease, instinct beat within me. All the layers of righteousness I had never imagined before swam about me._

_Primal and corporeal, primitive and insubstantial._

_Still fully dressed, she shimmied her layers of skirting up, higher and higher. I aided her. Lace and ruching and underdress crumpled up in my fists at her hips so mountains of dark blue taffeta hilled at her waist. The ermine edging tickled my fingers with its sensual texture. _

_Making short work of her blouson, I parted it and shredded her chemise without compunction. _

_Mesmerized by the motion of her breasts swaying up and down, her cherry nipples were the only fixed point that grounded me, and my mouth._

_Wavelets, from undercurrents. On my knees between her thighs, my erection cowled over her delta. Over and over and over again. The swivel of my hips met the upward reach of her pelvis. With her back lifted up like a rainbow from the sofa, I crouched above her and met every surface of her reclined body. Waves cresting, reaching lakeshore, breaking upon the sandbar situated at the juncture of her thighs. Each thrust was of nature, natural, up over her, down under her, rubbing and stroking. Her breasts collided with my lips as I ascended her almost bare body, my chest scraped her nipples as I settled back down into the riptide._

_A gigantic crash gave freedom to my excitation, my shaft that had grown and tightened and turned so very dark with blood, and to my exclamation, "ISABELLA!" Her name came from deep inside._

"_Swan," I gasped._

Alone.

She had disappeared back into the ether from whence she had come.

Only the wet lavish plumes of milky seed, long streams of it upon the leather beneath me and all over my stomach and chest remained of our dimensional entanglement.

Sweaty, rumpled, satiated, still heated and newly ill-tempered, I cleaned myself up and fell to bed early.

I did not wake until late the next day.

All was strangely quiet. There was no bustle. No one had called me to breakfast. Even the street outside my casement was still.

Hot all over, queasy and thirsty, I looked longingly at my discarded habille, at the chaise that had been imprinted by one I would never know.

One foot in front of the other, I made my way down the stairs. Ponderously. Sensing something immense impending.

I was shaking by the time I reached the foyer.

Cloying with grippe.

Elizabeth was a heap of bones and skin and lace and satin upon the plush rug of the parlor. Father was rasping out great chunks of breath, half dressed for bed in his nightshirt, shoes still on, taken ill within the confines of the armchair that sat next to the marble fireplace.

_Influenza._

I scrambled to Mother and checked her shuddering pulse, crawled to Father and heard the rattle of death in his lungs.

Falling out of the house, down the steps, I met unconsciousness.

_~~ll~~_

Waking to a cold touch, a flinty hard gem with sharp edges cutting into my palm, I opened my bleary grainy eyes.

_It was him!_

The man from the Ballet, the father from my dreams.

_A doctor?_ I blinked as I took in his white coat, his gleaming stethoscope, his glinting teeth. The sparkling diamond ring that had been pushed into my hand, cutting me with its shards.

My mother's ring?

Clarity was heaped over by chills.

"Edward Anthony Masen, your mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Masen, wanted you to have this."

My mother? My father? My touchstones?

Dead?

A vortex of noise, the rush of blood to my ears filled the yawning void left by my deceased mother. Drowning out this Dr. Cullen's explanation of the last few days. Of the complete destruction of my family.

I caved in. Buckled beneath illness and grief. Tears made a craven mess of my face that was flushed through fever, not desire.

His sad smile grew wider. Telling me something. Hands a refuge of cold against the blazing feverish swamp that entided me, he pressed my head aside.

The littlest glimpse of insight made me recognize his intent.

_A sire._

"_Your mother wanted this, Edward." _The precise puncture of his teeth to my throat made me cry inside!

Numbed through, I was helpless to react.

And we saw _her_ at the same time, together.

Was it his vision or my dream?

_Dressed in clothing not of this epoch._

A desiccating burn harrowing my bones, killing my heart with each placid beat, I held her through my howling.

Spilling future love.

_Isabella Swan._

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**~~How do you feel about our young Edward? ~~**

**I'll tell you my fave at the end, but I'm kind of liking this one.**

**Last call for The Faithful Shipper Awards for Dead Confederates. All pertinent info. in the previous chapter, voting ends tomorrow.**

**Have I said thanks yet? I never imagined this response to my craziness! So, yeah, cheers for holding my hand through all of this! I am utterly spellbound and beholden to y'all.**

**I'm thinking Wood is next. Oooh, that conjures all sorts of ideas!**


	9. Wood

The Twilight Twenty-Five  
Prompt: 24. Wood  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: Jasper/Edward  
Rating: M

**Vi, you are rockin' my socks off! I'd probably be sitting in a corner crying right now if it wasn't for your help with this.**

**Disclaimer: The boys in the south will always be mine. The rest of Twilight will always be SM's.**

**~~There are many women I want to thank for taking me to slash or it to me: Christie, Mer, Amanda, Char. Above all though, this goes out to Claudia, as a birthday wish…this is the fluffier one~~**

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**Wood **

**Circa 2009**

**DeBordieu, SC**

**Jasper**

This was supposed to be our vacation, and I was nervy as a young foal! The only time I relaxed was when I was feeding, or when Edward was awake. His sleeping form taunted me from the large bedstead set across from me. The sun was rising, but my human lover was not.

Edward alone made me timid as an innocent boy in the first throes of love. My palms sweaty, _sort of_, with his proximity, my mouth dry, apart from the venom that swilled like saliva with the smallest gander of his brawny forearms and wide wrists. The twists and turns of his muscles made my hair, and my cock, stand on end. I liked to tweak the fine copper wires that made filigree of his chest just so I could hear Edward whimper in that deep, gravelly voice and curl his naked luscious big pink red and wet cock up to mine.

Morningwood, HA! I had perma-wood! I never slept so the idea of morningwood was ludicrous, and I was hard as fuck most hours of the day and night.

This was ridiculous! I was a manly man, a hunter, a predator, a vampire! And yet my knees knocked when Edward looked up at me from beneath the cascading black feathers of his ridiculously long eyelashes. Taking all of me in with his heart of forest eyes.

Singularly unaware, unaffected, or just fucking oblivious to the threat I encapsulated in the strength of my fingers, power I barely needed to exert to kill instantly, and the raw slice of my teeth that could serrate over skin like slicing through stalks of herbs, Edward had approached me.

_Sexy, self-assured, handsome, so sensual with his come hither eyes and his loping gait that spoke of hours spent greedily bedding and feverishly fucking, he had no compunction when he tried to snag the cab I was flagging down._

_Insanely, for one inherently graceful, I fell off the curb, at first simply surprised, put-out and pissed off any mere human would dare cross my path. _

_When his hand lashed out to pull me to the sidewalk before I could crush a car with my unyielding frame, I almost collapsed again._

_Just though his touch._

_And he felt it too._

_Brokering peace, we shared that taxi. I couldn't stop staring at his hair that tossed about the crown of his head like it, itself, had just had the most savage sex!_

_Smiling so wide his curvy red carved lips looked big enough to eat, he unabashedly took in my growing erection held tight in the crotch of my jeans and twined his fingers together as if to keep them from touching me._

_The smoky air inside the cab turned muggy and heavy with immediate desire._

_En route, my house was first, a Charleston Single in the French quarter of downtown Charleston._

_He knew where I lived._

_The persistent, beautiful, robust mortal man stalked me, staked me out. Introduced himself as Edward and again my gut plundered to my toes when we clasped hands over my own name. _

_With his rarified air, I could never have turned Edward down when he asked me out. Always the marauder, it was, in fact, nice to be pursued._

_Within days of our first date we were bound. Quickly, inextricably! In under a week, Edward had fucked me blind. _

_Different, novel, fresh and something I had never looked for in another man, woman, and not even in another vampire, the immediate feeling I had for Edward was overwhelming and all-reaching. I didn't want to be perfidious, but once again I was cowering and scared to tell him the truth. _

_He hardly even blinked when I admitted I was a vampire! Nodding his head succinctly, Edward eased his tapered fingers through mine across the table where he ate breakfast and I pushed my sloppy disgusting sunny-side-up eggs around the plate, giving up the pretense of eating. As if I had just told him I preferred my eggs over easy._

_When the reality sank in, Edward asked questions. Born and bred in the south, he had a sassy southern drawl, which made me want to eat the honey-dipped words that dripped from his mouth. It took Herculean effort to concentrate on his un-fucking-ending questions when all I wanted to do was get him back in bed, or topple him to the floor, or stand him up against the wall. Hours and days of queries while he put on his sexy specs and jotted notes as if there would be a test forthcoming. _

_Some were so preposterous it was cute, and I couldn't stop myself from pitching forward to softly kiss his pursed thoughtful lips. Some were more serious and galling. Tendencies I didn't want to admit, inquiries I didn't want to answer._

_What did I eat, had I ever killed, when had I died, when would I die, why didn't I age?_

"_Animals, yes, in the 1800's, never, because I am undead."_

_A nagging sadness ached inside of me. A yawning void grew, little by little, at each passing year._

Now naked and fucking gloriously sinewed, Edward stretched and rolled in his sleep, and the sheet tangled down beneath his hips, displaying the succulent dick that hardened beneath my flattering gaze and the wild cool wind that whipped the drapes in and out of the casement.

The satiny cotton sheet slid farther down to his thighs -- I may have helped it along a little bit, but who was I to deny his masterpiece shaft from its first breath of morning light?-- catching in the swelling hold of his balls and nestling there just as my mouth wanted to. I was envious of a fucking scrap of cloth!

_That_ was the true meaning of morningwood. I licked my lips and wished I still had him on my tongue. But I'd taken a shower soon after he fell to slumber, washing the cake of sex and sand and sea spray from my body.

Completely naked, almost complete, I had sat back in the plush recliner to watch over Edward's dreams and await his waking to a day that would finally never end.

Each wistful mumble, sighing rumble, scissor of legs and tenuous sleepfull stretch caught in my throat. Made me think about every part of Edward over my shoulders, against my back, between my fists with his hands rough from work making a devious wander south over my chest and abdomen to my cock.

I stood for a moment, ready to pounce.

Then sat back down with my dick slapping against my thigh and then up to my stomach.

_Once he had plied his cock, a slick wet teasing thing, all over my body, bidding me to keep still. From the sensitive shaking undersides of my arms, between my thighs, prodding my sac and slipping over my erection, plunging into my navel, against my throat, finally he laid his ponderous length against my lips but would not let me open my mouth. I begged him with my eyes as he dribbled drops of cum into the corners of my lips._

_His breathing just as harsh as mine, he pulled away and rasped, "Lick your lips, Jasper."_

_Groans and growls spilled out of me as I sucked his treat down my throat and tried to yank him over me so our naked bodies could collide._

_But Edward sat between my legs, shook his head, and made me watch him as he took both our cocks in his two hands and rubbed venom to cum and cock to dick until thinking, focusing, looking, breathing became futile efforts._

_I could have overpowered him in a heartbeat, but I would do whatever he fucking wanted, whenever he wanted!_

_He made me grovel before allowing me to widen his stance and pull him over, onto me._

_Certainly I'd been with men, women, vampires alike, but this was different._

_This was everlasting._

_We'd lived together, as husbands, mates, helpmeets for three years._

_And now Edward was twenty-six to my century and a half._

_Everything I had been before him became a moot point._

_And he never once asked for it, never complained; never even outright spoke of the fact that every tolling year took him further down the road of death while I remained static._

_He was too proud for that._

_I could think of nothing else._

I was getting myself all worked up because something enormous was beginning and something gigantic was ending. I no longer knew which way was up unless I was with Edward! In reality, I just wanted to work him over for the fourth time this night. Blast his damn human nature that made sleep the most irritating necessity.

In our seaside cottage at exclusive DeBordieu, the formerly prosperous pre-Civil War coastal realm of South Carolina, Edward and I were taking a break from real life to idle in this borderland of God.

It seemed fitting for what I had planned.

My soul was strong, and Edward's spirit an undaunted thing.

There were mid-afternoons on the dunes, wrestling like boys in the sand, splashing wildly in the surf, holding hands, walking the beach, toeing up seashells that had already been inspected and left for us late wanderers. Not a single whole sand-dollar remained.

While he napped and rested from my insatiable passionate greed, I feasted off the plentiful game. Fey deer gamboled through the orange-red-grey wash of evening and saw me hidden in bracken and hardy vegetation sampling the musky blood of mammals.

And still Edward slept on.

I had ulterior motives for bringing him to this colony; my intention wasn't just to make sultry love to him from the dusk of one day to the dawn of the next.

I groaned in frustration…perhaps, intentionally, a little too loudly and right close to Edward's ear, contemplating the manifold ways I could enclose that pink shell that turned bright red during orgasm in my mouth while my hand trembled over his exposed cock with piercing longing to enclose it.

The frigid breeze of my breath fired goosebumps over Edward's upper arms as I inclined closer to him, willing him to wake. To need me as much as I desired him.

Sloping to his side, facing me, slowly blinking open his sleepy soft viridian eyes, the pout of dusty siesta made his lips fuller over the hushed nettle of his voice, "What's the meaning of this?" Pulling up on his elbow that dented the goosedown mattress, Edward scrubbed his face with his hand, rasped the dark auburn stubble that stippled his high cheeks, square jaw, and strong neck in a pointillist pattern that felt like ten thousand tiny pinpricks on my skin when he rubbed his beard's growth over me.

Then he smirked as awareness settled in, like the sheet caught up in the nest of his groomed pubic hair, falling to hide all but the lovely ripe tip of his cock.

I wanted to fuck the smirk right off of his face!

Eros exploded my heart.

Eroticism combusted my body.

Shaking off my novitiate's feelings, I plucked Edward's mouth with my lips. Nibbled and wet his delectable flesh. Sifted my hands over the breadth of his chest, the depth of his tummy, reaching behind to grab his ass, hard.

With a blast of laughter detonating his being, Edward toppled back and pulled me over him, and I wrestled that motherfucker of a cockblocking sheet to the end of the bed!

Silencing his amusement, I kissed him passionately, working over, into, under every crafty slippery surface, and took my lips lower to nip at his chin and rake my tongue over the bright bristles that tried to make acupuncture through my tastebuds, pointlessly.

By the time I was done kissing him, Edward's jaw was thoroughly chafed, his lips chapped. Vividly crimson, raw, ruddy, ready.

Circling above me, Edward plastered that greedy mouth to my pecs as his reedy eyes took all of me in, mumbling, "Hominy…"

Frowning through the intense swamp of heat his licking made of my skin as it moved from nipple to nipple, touching and tasting each of my ribs on both sides of my torso, and deep down into the cut of sinew that were cliffs just inside my hipbones, I questioned, "Hominy?"

Nuzzling all around the base of my shaft and nothing more so my head cracked back into the mountain of pillows, pushing out white feathers through seams, Edward muttered, "Yeah, hominy, honey. Boiling, boiled, kernels, puffed, perfect posole…your nipples. I could eat them all day long."

Fuck. Me.

I knew I'd said that aloud when Edward chuckled into my cock.

I lost all sight, thought, worry, every-fucking-thing, when he slurried his beautiful mouth over me and sank like the clouds of heaven onto me!

Clawing the bedding so as not to rip apart Edward's hair tickling my thighs and grazing a scratchy silky beat over my pelvis, I growled and cried out. Two long air-tight tugs tore me apart!

He enjoyed my cold cum down his throat, likening the texture and flavor to vanilla ice cream.

Who was I to deny him pleasure? Nourishment?

I couldn't wait to have Edward inside of me, thrusting, unbreakable, and unbearably rigid. Not yet. All of my form, inside and out, was so inflexible I feared for the safety of his cock should he fuck me solid.

Soon though, I would know the gratifying sensation of him playing in and out of me.

I ran my hands through my hair, enticing Edward with my flexing biceps, jutted my hips up so that my cock nudged his nose that was buried in my balls, and lifted him up over me. The swag of his shaft dipped to my tum, beat twice, and then raised back up to its proper perpendicular stature.

Fumbling for the lube on the nightstand, I sat up against Edward. Locked his legs around my waist. Tangled one hand in his locks and lipped and sucked his mouth while I reached behind him to make a wet sheath of my dick.

So fucking ready for him.

"Already, baby?" Edward smiled into a kiss that went from soft to harsh in a heartbeat.

Huskily, I moaned, "Christ, yes."

"Well, darlin', your turnaround time is impressive," he simpered, sampling the lobe of my ear.

"Morningwood," I tapped the column of his cock, "Permawood," I stroked myself up and down, twice.

"That could become a problem, if not handled properly, Jasper," Edward lifted up with his feet planted flat on the bed at my sides and his arms braced on my thighs.

Coming down onto me, he moaned out a heavy thing.

I curled one forearm around his waist and held him as he arched backward.

Reveling in the feel of that tight hot clasping swath enveloping me.

The tightest of tight ring of muscles clamped the base of my cock, the hardest of hard soft smooth buttons of tissue teased my head, fully seated inside of him.

Eroding back out of Edward, my ass met the bed and I pulled him up, almost off of me.

"FUCK!" Edward shouted.

"Yes," I growled.

The soles of my feet twitched and curled into the mattress like into silty sand wearing away beneath Atlantic breakers.

My cock was the outgoing tide, the incoming surf.

His sweat both woodsy cedar and stinging sea breeze.

The air we made, the moans we stole were all steamy, briny, pure and misty and mingled between lover's utterances and mighty tumultuous salty shouts, shoals.

Pounding like the surf, I plundered in and out of Edward, pushing with such force he bounced upon my hips and sank back down like a ship's prow to ocean floor. White capped wavelets of my poison began to leak out.

Between us, above me, Edward's shaft was a Redwood of the Pacific Northwest I had known intimately. Tall, swollen, bright-headed. Streaked like rosy emulsion, his elite erection eclipsed anything I had ever seen. Carved with veins, cut by the shelf of his canopying head, his cock was resplendent!

Drops of unguent lifted up and out and tracked down. I gathered those dribbles in my fingers and brought them to my mouth.

And rhythmically moved until all became clasping gasping frantic currents of hurricanes over the ocean.

Sound sucked out, my cock was sucked in. Edward's spattered streams of cum up my chest. Silent howls and inert clenched muscles and open mouthed mute screams!

I jerked hard and thought I would never stop.

Edward laughed and grinned and bellowed through my unending orgasm. When I had breath enough, I sniggered into his neck, holding him tight to me. Loving this man.

Folding us over into a heap of replete limbs, muscles lax, sleepy as if overtaken by tryptophan, Edward snuffled back into slumber almost immediately while I embraced him in a dreamy trance of my own.

_~~ll~~_

Superbly reclined on the rough woolen sofa in our rustic red-tin roofed cottage, a fire roasting in the fieldstone fireplace that built its way from scaly blue slate hearth to timbered cathedral ceiling, awaiting his evening meal like the king he was, Edward was replenished after a day's worth of snoozing and a hot shower.

The burning pyramid of driftwood made greenish blue phosphorescent smoke that leapt out of the brazier before it was sucked up the chimney and out into the coldening night.

Padding over the uneven pine floorboards until my feet fell into the coarse old Oriental rug, I smiled at the sight of him.

_My man._

Eyeing, most unwholesomely, my body naked but for a pair of racy skimpy boxers, Edward looked to the heirloom tea tray I carried.

Usually it held his evening meal. Oddly turned on by the image of him eating, I had taken to cooking for my mortal lover. Another means of showing my adoration for him.

Tonight the service was all but empty.

In future, Edward would not need human sustenance.

"What's the meaning of this, Jasper," Edward asked the same question he had not eight hours before, this time properly understanding the implications of the sole wineglass and the uncorked bottle of 2006 Lamborn Serendipity Vintage Zinfandel.

I decanted the rich crimson drops into his glass and watched the legs of wine following crystal.

Much like his blood would soon fall into my throat.

He held the upperhand.

Always had, always would.

_Always._

I would give Edward anything. I wanted to take everything.

_Even this._

Placing a wide silver band upon his left ring finger, I bent upon one knee, beholden by his wide smile of acceptance that he could not hide behind the wine he slowly imbibed.

With the glass empty and set aside, Edward licked his lips tainted by tannin and grapes and whispered, "Yes, Jasper."

_My husband, my timeless mate._

_Edward._

**~~Sweet? Sexy? Sassy?~~**

**Let's see, what am I doing now?**

**Just finished Incarcerated, yay me! So go read it.**

**I'm working on a Les Femmes Noires contest entry with a most criminal cohort. Yeah, remember Bad Bella from **_**Heart**_**? Alert our new collab fanfic account: SinisterSisterhood (we'll be doing our profile up proper asap and my like-minded minx will be revealed).**

**Toying with the idea of an entry for the MixItUp contest, which will leap off from **_**Touch**_**, to be called **_**Taste**_** (deep throating the Cavalier, anyone?).**

**This week will see another crazy wild dirty sexy funny chapter of Dead Confederates.**

**You guys fucking rock! Thanks for the love, leave some more ********.**

_~~ll~~_

_**Misguided Angel**_**, Cowboy Junkies**

_I said Mama, he's crazy and he scares me  
But I want him by my side  
Though he's wild and he's bad  
And sometimes just plain mad  
I need him to keep me satisfied_

_I said Papa, don't cry cause its alright  
And I see you in some of his ways  
Though he might not give me the life that you wanted  
I'll love him the rest of my days_

_Misguided angel hangin' over me  
Heart like a Gabriel, pure and white as ivory  
Soul like a Lucifer, black and cold like a piece of lead  
Misguided angel, love you til I'm dead_

_I said brother, you speak to me of passion  
You said never to settle for nothing less  
Well, its in the way he walks,  
It's in the way he talks  
His smile, his anger and his kisses_

_I said sister, don't you understand?  
He's all I ever wanted in a man  
I'm tired of sittin' around the t.v. every night  
Hoping I'm finding a Mr. Right_

_Misguided angel hangin' over me  
Heart like a Gabriel, pure and white as ivory  
Soul like a Lucifer  
Black and cold like a piece of lead  
Misguided angel, love you til I'm dead_

_He says baby, don't listen to what they say  
There comes a time when you have to break away  
He says baby there are things we all cling to all our life  
It's time to let them go and become my wife_

_Misguided angel hangin' over me  
Heart like a Gabriel, pure and white as ivory  
Soul like a Lucifer  
Black and cold like a piece of lead  
Misguided angel, love you til I'm dead_


	10. Voracious

The Twilight Twenty-Five  
Prompt: 22. Voracious  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: Edward/Bella  
Rating: M

Vi…fucking AWESOME!!! Champagne lush, luscious saber tooth tiger (that's her chosen pet name to my puma); foodnetwork lover and coiner of _Pedanticward and Cavward_ who features heavily in this wee fic. Srsly, so much good and bad comes from Vi, *mwah*

Disclaimer: Me and Miss Vi own Pedanticward. SM owns Twi-related stuff.

~~Hey! I changed my title and summary, hope I didn't confuse y'all. So, I started this for the MixItUp Contest, which has been postponed. And It's just too much fun to leave, so I've made it Voracious. It continues on from Touch, in which Bella first met Edward Uncut. I stayed true to the rules of MIU (use three themes from other approved contests); so here are the themes used: Parkaward, Exploration of the Senses, and Darkward LITE, and I probably threw a few more in there, you'll have to let me know… Confused? Fuck, me too~~

To Mr. and Mrs. SlobberMonkey.

* * *

**Voracious**

**Forks, Washington**

**Circa 2006**

**Edward**

When I'd proposed a picnic in _our_ meadow, I definitely had plans for Bella; it was time to take our carnal relationship to the next, _deeper_, level.

At least she'd closed her eyes on the speedy run to the field, and there wasn't a queasy Bella to contend with as I lowered her gently off my back to the plaid blanket I had set amongst the circular field of flowers, broom, and brush.

Before I could even get a word in edgewise, or my member down her throat lengthwise, Bella interrupted my musings...with the loud complaining of her stomach.

Okay, no nauseous Bella, just hungry Bella.

She didn't want to play footsies, she wanted to play _foodie._ Her fucking nuisance of a human appetite was quite possibly the biggest cockblocker of our intimate life. Luckily I'd planned ahead and already displayed on the blanket was a feast of epicurean proportions!

While I piled a plate of fine china with decadent morsels I had prepared myself, I caught wind of Bella mumbling under her breath and asked, with a frown upon my arch eyebrows, "What was that, my love?"

She looked up in surprise and with the shameful expression of a child who'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, "Um, I said _Icouldgoferaburger_, Edward."

In my deliciously aroused state, all I heard was _fur burger_. And that shit was HOT! Imagining Bella going down on a woman. Hell, I wanted a fur burger too!

"Edward, why are you doing that gulping, eyes-rolling-into-your-head thing?"

My brain caught up with my fantasies, and I mentally smacked myself. _For a burger_. Damn.

Seriously? A beef burger? "Bella, I'm afraid I don't have any fast food here, just lovingly prepared dishes of the finest freshest ingredients," I smiled through a hint of irritation with what I hoped was loving indulgence.

"Well, what about just a sandwich then?" She looked up at me with her shy wide doe eyes, twirling a lock of her wavy chestnut hair around one of her wee fingers.

_Sandwich._ Mmmm, girl-on-girl, and me. _Leah and Bella and me!_ Yeah, that Leah was foxy. I bet she did it doggie-style too.

_A sandwich_. After I'd busted my granite glutes creating this tasty masterpiece of a repast? _Shit._ Putting on my most pleasant smile I pulled out the wax paper wrapped fluffernutter and watched in disgust as Bella tucked into the peanut butter and marshmallow confection. Until a marbled gooey dollop of PB and M laced her plush peony pink lips, looking for all the world like a soft, sweet, sticky blob of my own ejaculate.

My eyes glazed over for what felt like an erotic eternity as Bella finished her sandwich. My stomach twisted and my balls hitched up when she licked her fingers clean. Only to kill the mood when she opened her mouth, "Pop-?"

It went without saying I had something else in mind for Bella's last course, and I had no doubt it would fill her up nicely, but the woman had to have her Pop Tarts, didn't she? I simply held up an index finger, hid my annoyance with a bland look and dug around the picnic hamper for the silver foil package, probably big enough to house a condom for my rearing-to-go cock-sicle. Tearing into the faux _papillote_ with fierce hungry intent, she plowed through the cold jelly-filled pseudo pastry like Emmett took to a grizzly bear. Like I wanted to grizzle over her lusty body and into her swelteringly wet folds.

A gourmand she was not.

"Dessert course, _ma petite chou?_" I queried, raising one eyebrow and adjusting my grim mouth into a fantastic crooked half-grin.

Lounging back on my elbows, I widened my legs, my erection making a teepee within my lounge pants. Detestable garments, but easy on, easy off.

Bella frowned, and finished chewing her gummy pastry.

_What ever happened to foreplay? Dirty talk? Did she really expect culinary 'afters' instead of a Cullenary sweet end-of-meal course?_

Mood killer.

I sat back up, staring straight ahead, bit the inside of my cheek while I hashed out, "Bella, you don't have to," - _Hell, who was I kidding, of course she did! _- "It's just that we had discussed the possibility of you deep throating."

Wiping her greasy hands on her pretty white peasant skirt so the cotton fabric stained and clung all the more to the pearly thighs I yearned to dive into, Bella crawled to me and reached those sure little hands right into my waistband. Pulling it low over my hips so the elastic snapped onto my unyielding thighs with a resounding _THWACK_, Bella sat back on her heels observing my obvious arousal standing upright from my groin. And fast becoming unbearably twitchy and even harder beneath her appreciative gaze.

Giggling, shattering the lascivious atmosphere and my manhood, _almost_, Bella blew across my erection so that it trembled in her hot breeze, "It's so cute…kind of like a pig-in-a-blanket!"

_Fuck my life._ "I prefer the term _cochon en croute_," I starkly countered.

Anemic Bella needed her protein, peanuts aside, and I wanted to give her an injection of my own thick substance. I mean, there had to be some nutritional merit to venom, right? _Note to self, get Carlisle to test the protein per poison content in our toxic semen._

Called to action, Bella wrapped both her hands around me, hard and tugging with strong gliding up and down motions. At least the grease from the Pop Tart still hiding out in the pleats of her palm provided adequate lube.

"_Oh fuck, Bella. That feels so good,"_ I growled, and my hips rolled up and down with her forceful touch. Flattening her palm, she ran its soft hills over and over and over the head of my cock until the globs of pre-cum made a glossy layer over the top of my purpling member.

Back to stroking up and down, Bella started to lower her mouth.

"_Fuck yes," _I hissed between clenched teeth.

One inch from my dick as it flew in and out of her fists, Bella stopped and looked me in the eye, "Oh my god, Edward, you're such a handful!"

I simply assumed Bella was referring to my sizeable shaft, and not my daunting personality. And I definitely didn't inform her I was such a handful because those hands of hers were just so small against my more-than-impressive length.

Finally she put that luscious plump mouth of hers to better use than talking and eating and opened it over me. The heat inside of her moist cavern was intense to my frigid cold member! Her wet saliva danced down my cock, her tongue tapped all around my head like a blind person's cane on a sidewalk, seeking the best path.

Just as she started bobbing up and down, and I was pushing deeper and deeper into her throat, Bella gagged and sat up, leaving my dick to sway like an abandoned buoy in rough seas.

"You're kind of blinding me with the glare of the sun on your glans, _big boy._ Where're my shades?"

_Jesus fucking Christ, was this a farce?_

I quickly scooted us into another, more screened position; one that would aid my goal to get my cock all the way in her mouth. With Bella on her back, me above her face with my knees on either side of her head, affectively shading her from the bright twinkling rays, I lowered my erection into her open mouth. Adjusting forward to maintain the correct angle, working through quick geometry in my head, I felt we were finally making _headway._

Jutting my pelvis up and down, my cock made its way inexorably in and out of her very sexy mouth, her lips enveloping me, her petite wan hand creeping up between my legs to cup my balls! I shifted down a tad more, having worked out a new parabola, pushing Bella further into the blanket.

Her head snapped back, my shaft was released from her vacuuming caress with a loud _POP_ -- _Bella was a peepee popper!_

Grunting and shaking and still rigid as a plank above her, I glowered at Bella.

Rubbing her swollen lips, she lifted her bum and whined, "I think there's a cocklebur in my ass, Edward!"

_I'd like to put a cock in your ass, love._

Dismounting, I turned her over, and sure enough a thorny little ball was embedded in the juicy flesh of her behind.

Clearly this wasn't going to work, not here.

Making a quick change of plans, I raced Bella from our less-than-romantic picnic to the house. Having neglected to keep her eyes shut, as I was forever requesting because of her predilection for motion sickness, Bella was wobbly and green around the gills when she disembarked.

Green was definitely _not_ her color. Dark blue, _yes._ Green, _no._

I massaged her back and plied her with a bottle of water until she'd recovered; my dick still priapic to the point of pain.

"Okay, Edward, I think I'm ready to try it again," Bella's color was back, a light pink hue lit her high cheeks and a new fire jigged in her earthy eyes.

'_Bout damn time!_

Arranging her on the bed, I instructed, "I think it's better if you lie on your back, you were almost getting it in that position back in the meadow."

Bella unfolded her lovely limbs that were now completely disrobed of her grass and grease stained skirt and camisole, "Like this?"

I shucked off my pajama pants and t-shirt and squinted to take in the lines her form made, figuring equations and quantums and possibilities for how best to get my entire cock into her throat. "Yes," I hissed as I watched her recline flat out, "Now just let your head hang off the edge of the bed."

Bella's eyes widened, then narrowed as she scooted to the end I stood at, turgid dick in hand. With no respect for her elders, Bella scorched, "Holy Crow! Who died and left you in charge?"

Mutely I stroked myself and glared at her.

She whispered, upside down and a tiny bit contrite, "_Right, you did."_

I nodded. And continued, "Now, Bella, _you just don't see yourself clearly._ I mean, your placement has been all wrong. In order for this to work, you must let me guide you," _by my hands to the back of your head!_

I tapped her chin with my forefinger, "Open. And relax your throat."

First frowning at me, Bella complied, forming a wet pink 'O' of her mouth. I slid in. And in. _And in!_

_And Holy Shit. I was IN!_

I knew this would work! _ In my imagination, I fist pumped the air._

Guiding my cock with one hand, my other clenched at my hip so I wouldn't clutch her hair and muzzle her with my erection, I planted my feet more solidly and felt a sheer tizzy of tantalizing slick-ridged-heat riding all over my dick!

Writhing against her mouth, rolling my hips with each meeting of my pelvis to her face, Bella's curls brushing my thighs with the contact, I didn't notice the blood rushing to her face, ruddy with more than exertion and blush.

With another _peepee popper_, Bella pushed me away and sat up slightly, dizzied by all the blood slithering back down into her body.

"What now?" I begged. Christ, I would plead if that's what she needed!

Huffing and puffing and trying to catch her breath, Bella explained in gasps, "I just felt a bit off-kilter down there," she flipped flimsy hands towards my achingly hard member, "And…_that flappy thing!"_

Fully disconcerted, I floundered, "What?"

She simply shook her head and pointed to my dick.

_Flappy thing? What the fuck? Oh. Jesus._

"I thought we already covered this, Bella. _Foreskin._ Let's review, shall we?" Again, I pulled the durable yet elastic skin that formed a velveteen stole around my cock, "This is a Cavalier, love. You best get used to it."

"_Whatever."_

Bella had the audacity to roll her eyes at my frighteningly firm fuck-wand, "Your _foreskin_ keeps getting caught in my Invisalign!"

"_Darling_," I instructed through gritted teeth, "You know you're supposed to take that out when you eat," _Not to mention when you suck dick._

Making haste, Bella tossed the blasted mouth-dam into its case before plunking back down.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I sat on the bed and groan-growled.

She clambered to me and planted perfect smooth kisses upon my back. Her arms enveloped me from behind, and peering over my shoulder she cajoled, "I think I'm going to call it Rumpelstiltskin_."_

Irrationally, I smiled. Just a bit. Turning to the side, I captured her lips in a searing kiss and licked over her mouth, "I don't spin gold, love, I _spill_ it."

_Maybe I just needed to be harder. Wait. Was that even possible?_

Running my nose up and down the thumping arteries in her neck and along her pale-skinned jaw, I nuzzled the tenuous tendon right behind her nautilus earand breathed, "Ready to give it the old college try?"

Hell yes she was. She settled right back into place, earning an ear-to-ear grin and a wink from me.

Slurped me into her mouth and went to work, reinvigorated and getting down to the task at hand!

Voraciously, she sucked me in and out, letting me fuck her mouth. Her teeth grazed a bit too starvingly and I warned between chopping breaths, "Careful, Bella. I'm not serving up one of those Little Debbie Snack Cakes you're so fond of…" –_I wish she'd lay off the sweets, Bella was beginning to pack a few pounds on her arse, distorting the girlish mortal figure I'd fallen in love with. _

Setting a more sedate pace, still licking me down into her elongated throat, she hummed against my glans.

_Fuck yes and more more more, please!_

I yanked on my own silky bronze hair with one hand and reached low to grab the back of Bella's head with the other. Fisting her tresses and bringing myself in and out of the puff pastry of her pestling lips.

The mortar of her teeth grinding against me again had me pulling out completely, before cum cascaded out of me, "It's not one of Charlie's fried fish platters, Bella," I shook and stood with my knees hitting the mattress just as my cock had hit the back of her throat and beyond, "Take your time, love. _Savor it_."

"Well, it certainly doesn't taste like honey, Edward… and it is a bit fishy…," Bella proclaimed to my surprise, but she slowly, succulently, took all of me back in.

My dick being swallowed down her throat, wrapped in the fine casing of her lips, was the most delicious sight! But her fucking lashing sweaty strands kept interrupting my vision. Leaning over, I rummaged through her satchel for a hair tie to get that mess away from her working lips. Making a quick bun, I bound her locks and started to unleash my cool whipped cream right down her neck!

Gulping furiously, Bella's eyes teared up, and my cum just kept on a'coming as my body rattled with release and my voice winded and whirred like a moaning creaky clockwork!

Replete, I slid from Bella's beautifully satisfying mouth, and she immediately reached for the water bottle on the nightstand. Swishing around the tepid liquid like it was Listerine, Bella gargled and I felt insulted. _Was my venom not sweet and tasty? Hmmm._

Swallowing her mouthwash swill and clearing her throat, Bella came up to her knees and prodded me in the chest, "Fuck, Edward! Next time warn a girl before you belt your _bootang_ into her!"

Chagrined, I looked to my bare feet, "Sorry, Bella! I just thought it tasted good…"

"Well, it is sort of yummy; in the first stage when it's all creamy, but when you release it all in, _how many was that anyway, like five long spurts?" _

_"_I don't know precisely, Bella, but it was definitely more than three…"

"-- _Yeah,_ _five long long squirts like that_, the texture gets a bit pulpy, like unstrained orange juice. And, honestly it's a bit of a mouthful."

I nodded in agreement, that made perfect sense, "Okay, yes. I needed to know that, thank you, my love." I ceded….for a change. "So next time…?"

"Next time GIVE ME A WARNING before you go all Orange Julius down my throat," she followed up her edict with a hushed, '_Duh'._

Shushing her with my mouth, I stole into that inferno-like cistern with my cool tongue, lapping hers and tasting the last teasers of my cum that had coated her. It didn't taste half bad to me -- _I didn't see what all the fuss is about._

Our tongues battled for dominance! _My kiss, mine, mine, mine. I knew I'd win, Alice had told me, and you just never bet against Alice._

Pinning her spirited tongue to the floor of her mouth I bade it to remain still with the slightest bit of withheld pressure. I mean, that insatiable organ of hers just got in the way of my sweeping, sucking, licking and touching!

I realized too late the error of my ways, having effectively silenced Bella when I really wanted to hear her scream my name in the throes of ecstasy.

I unloosed her swollen bright lips to demand, "Who makes you wet, Bella?"

Suckling the precise creased corner of her mouth, I heard a low, '_Here we go again',_ before she answered with a sigh, "You do, Edward."

Braiding my long tapered fingers into her hair and forcing her eyes to mine, her mouth a hairsbreadth away, I implored again, "Scream my name, Bella. I can't hear you!"

Another mumble across my lips, _"Deaf much?"_

_Dammit!_ This was not going according to plan. Fast becoming incensed and my cock hardening anew, turned on by her feisty refusal to acquiesce, I cupped her corpulent ass and ground into her juncture, right where her scant panties clothed her perfect nether lips, "WHO MAKES YOU WET, BELLA?! Use your outdoor voice! No One Makes You As Wet As I Do, Do They?"

Still glib and unresponsive but for the undeniable swirl of her pussy against my member, I gave it one more shot, jolting against her with each uttered word, "SAY. MY. NAME. SAY IT!!"

With a roll of her eyes and deep inhalation, Bella granted my wish with feigned abandon, "EDWAAARDDDDDD, you do!!!"

_Much better._ I grinned and made fast work of kissing her into wet, hot, torrid oblivion. Reaching down, slipping my well-wrought fingers into her boy shorts, I spread and fingered her folds. Then stared disbelievingly when my hand came up dry as the Sahara Desert.

Not sopping, not at all. Disappointed, I broke free of her mouth and that untameable tongue, "Bella, you're not very wet."

Pulling on my hair with a rough grip, just so and in a manner that made pure venom pound up and down my cock like an electric current, Bella apologized, _sort of_, "Sorry, I know. It's just, I know _some_ people get off on dirty talk alone, but I kinda need some action…?"

"I beg your pardon?" Needless to say, my one eyebrow was raising my hairline and my crooked half smile was a thing of the past.

"Maybe you could…_go down on me?"_ she clarified.

_Right, YES!_ I mentally fist-pumped the air…_again_. _That I could do._

I shredded her Robin's egg blue – _thank God they weren't puce_ – panties from her body. Well, they were old, threadbare and worn, the elastic fluttering out of the waist in some parts and bunched up unattractively in others…they easily parted company with her peach colored, ripe ass.

Bella reclined on the mountainous pillows and opened her crème caramel legs. Enjoying the sight of her, pulsing, pretty and pink, shell upon shell upon cowl and that tiny hooded _bonne bouche_ that expanded beneath my mouth and my drumming fingertip, I licked my lips before I licked hers.

Running up and down her slit with the broad flatness of my tongue, I felt her thighs trembling with wantonness against my shoulders. Pursing my mouth, I plucked her outer curves all the way in and thrust my tongue inside her like an arrow aimed for pleasure.

Bella's head tossed back as she moaned, "_Ooooh,"_ and, _"Aaaah,"_ and, _"Whatever you're doing, Edward, don't stop!"_

I stopped.

_Whatever I'm doing?_ No no no. I couldn't have that! Clearly another tutorial was in order.

Shocked, perplexed, her formerly hooded umber eyes turning black with surprise and round as dinner plates, Bella opened her mouth to complain, but I silenced her with a look and a finger, the one that was still dry from earlier.

"You must understand, Bella, about your feminine anatomy. It's really a rite of passage to learn about your own body."

I could have sworn, when she closed her eyes in defeat, she rolled them behind the thinness of her eyelids.

Undaunted, I carried on.

Threading her fingers through mine, I brought our twined hands down to her glistening _mille feuille._ I laid both our palms onto her folds, gently fondling those plush opening drapes, and speaking over Bella's groan I intoned, "Labia Majora."

_She felt so good like this; open, glossy and seasoned as a grape on the vine, bursting with flesh and ready to split._

I chewed my lip while she laved her own, and we moved on to the next lesson. Parting our fingers to use just our index and middle digits, I placed them to either side of her engorged inner folds, using the rough of our fingertips to graze up and down, "Labia Minora."

I let her enjoy the caress, her pelvis moving in time, while I bent to savor her clit that had shouldered its red way out of its cloak.

"More, please," Bella began to whimper.

I smirked into her, and delivered the next example. Knotting one of her fingers between two of mine, we entered the lush flooding recess. "This, my sweetmeat, is your sexy, moist, searing vagina," my breath was coming in gusts and Bella was threatening to quit breathing altogether.

"Oh god, Edward!" Bella clenched her fist into her hair, and then into mine, "Isn't there more?"

_More?_

_Shit!_

I was drawing a blank.

Rising through the haze of erogeny and erudition that had dazzled her, Bella stopped our rubbing and clamped down, hard. "G-spot?"

She unlocked her fingers and brought her own out with a long shuddering sigh. In amazement, I regarded her next move. With those dripping digits glowing up her body and drizzling her own sticky juice in a trail to her mouth, Bella sucked her fingers clean with gusto, like she was downing one of her favored 7-Eleven Slurpees! My breath left in a _whoosh_ of desire and then returned with a befuddled thought -- _did she really think she tasted that much better than me? _

Leaving me to work this mythical puzzle of a g-spot out on my own. I bumbled about blindly –_ it wouldn't hurt if her mind were not such a fucking black hole_ – for that secret tidbit hidden away inside her tight pussy.

And bungled some more.

I could tell Bella wanted to huff as her roasty wetness cooled.

Sweet as could be, as if butter wouldn't melt in her titillating mouth, Bella smiled and said, "Here, let me assist you in finding my _truffle_, dear."

First licking her finger to a flawless sensual tool, she quickly took up one of my own and guided us back inside. Lifting her hips – _I had to appreciate the obtuse angle her arched back created_ – we searched for a moment until…._BINGO!_

Bella's body jumped off the bed, bringing my buried hand with it, gasping hard, "That's…my….G-SPOT!!" She screamed as I kept pressing and pressing and pressing the most sensitive point in her body.

Suddenly so responsive, _receptive_, Bella danced around the bed beneath my touch and my tongue! Two more strokes and she came. Another four and she climaxed again.

I added my mouth and her clit to the mix, gaining myself a severe case of asbestos tongue, which I imagined to be the opposite of frostbite, for lucky number three.

And then I had to stop. Her breath was beating in and out like the _boom boom boom _of a bass drum. She was drenched in sweat and the tantalizing leavings of her orgasms.

I wanted to give her more!

But not with the hair caught in my teeth.

It turned out I was not so keen on the fur burger after all. I wanted it clean, sans condiments, so to speak.

_This was beyond the pale!_ Unsettled, I cleared my throat and cleaned out my teeth with my tongue, "Bella, I must insist you get waxed."

"What?"

"The whole _allotment_, love."

Nodding her head frantically, Bella agreed, "Whatever. Just carry on already!"

With that agreed upon, I went back to happily snacking on her snatch.

"You're so wet, Bella. So so wet for me. That's better, _much better._" I languished her _langue du chats_ with endless kisses, caresses, and nibbles all over and took the time to get to know her g-spot personally…with my pointed, ludicrously long, supernatural tongue.

I liked it when she purred.

I didn't really like it when she used my head, clamped between her thighs, to try to create some sort of friction to ease the ache between her legs.

_Not at all._

I held her hips immobile to the bed because her inner thighs rasped like cricket legs against my ears and they were beginning to annoy the hell out of me!

I mumbled into her, "Bella, you better cease and desist, if you know what side your bread's buttered on."

To my undying awe, she sat straight up, grabbed my ears that were still irritated, sanded as they were by her legs' rubbing, and dragged my face straight back down to her Labias Majora, Minora, Clitoris, Grafenberg Spot and Vagina.

My Bella was finally satiated.

I was not.

I prodded her with my fingertip, trying to awaken her from her not-quite post coital daze.

"Hmmm?"

"I need to be inside you, now, Bella-love."

Rolling from her side to her back again, Bella made ready.

Holding my enormously full, unfulfilled erection, I entered her sheath like a sword to scabbard.

And fuck if my eyes didn't try to cross. I was worried they'd get stuck that way, so I maintained my stare on my cock to watch the way I wound into her.

I stilled once fully sheathed, waiting for her to stretch around me, to _accommodate_ my formidable girth.

Until I needed the abrasion of movement.

Persisting in watching my member sucking in and pulling out of her pussy, I enjoyed the _bain-marie_ of her slippery heat dripping all over me.

Glancing up to see if Bella was enjoying the show too, I noted her eyes were tightly shut, and her mouth pursed around half-curses and inanities that spilled out.

"Look at me, Bella," I requested. Now was not the time for her to close those sumptuous brown orbs. When I was running like a mad beast at the speed of light with her in my arms, _yes._ Now? Not so much.

Her limpid eyes popped open as did her lips around her quiet grumbling, _"Here we fucking go again."_

Seeking to fuck the uncooperativeness out of her, I lunged hard into her and slowly grazed out.

Her eyes rolled back into her head like a glassy ball in a pinball machine and I wondered if she was having a seizure. Did I need to call 911?

Another plunder, another pull all the way out…she wasn't twitching too much, not foaming at the mouth.

Her eyes were still rolling.

"I. Said. Look. At. Me."

_Jesus, what did it take to get her attention?_

"Bella, I will stop unless you fucking look at me."

_Ah yes, that did the trick._

Bella's neck cranked up and her eyes opened wide and her sharp little heels locked into my ass.

"Now," I slid back in – her big browns looked likely to do that spinning trick again – "You will keep your eyes here," I made a V-sign with my middle and index fingers, pointing them from her eyes to mine, indicating that she was to keep her regard on me at all times.

Juices were flowing, eyes were open, hips were meeting and my cock in her pussy had never felt better, wetter, hotter, harder, larger, thicker!

I wanted more. I needed to demonstrate my aptness as a pupil.

Flipping Bella to her front, plastering the ivory rounds of her shoulders to the duvet, hoisting her mouth-watering posterior up to my hips, I dove in and drove her into the mattress, and the bed skittered across the floor. This well-placed slant made quick work of her g-spot, and I hit it over and over again, speeding up with a fast slamming motion. Flesh slapped, and Bella jumped like a trout at the end of a fishing line!

Straining to fashion the correct words, I crushed out, "You see…Bella…_fuck_…this…mmmmFUCK…iswhyitpays…to concentrate…_ahhh_…in CLASS!"

I couldn't tell if Bella was heeding my cock or my proclamation, so I wanted to drive my point home. One. More. Time.

"What's my grade for g-spot, baby?"

"Fuckin' AAAAAA!" She climaxed, her shrieks of pleasure drowning out…_Clair de Lune._

I followed swiftly, crumpling over her back like, well, a crumpet…I guess. As soon as I came in many more than three long squirts of ropey creamy cum!

Later, I soothed Bella's female anatomy with a cooled washcloth. Once more admiring her flawless petit four.

My eyes took on a feverish glint.

_Fuck petit fours, next time I wanted Bella on all-fours, in a different manner. Her ass would be mine. _

Dimming my glimmer, I folded myself around Bella to cool her flushed flesh, "What do you want for dinner, my love. Coq au vin?"

She must have been sleep talking when she mumbled into her pillow, "_More like cock au vain."_

_

* * *

  
_

_**~~Did you laugh at Pedanticward? Bella's getting sassafras!~~**_

_**The Bride of Edward Cullen**_** is now out! You must go to blondie's and my collab profile, SinisterSisterhood. Please heed the warning: this was written for Les Femmes Noires. It is dark, and sick-funny.**


	11. Soft

The Twilight Twenty-Five  
Prompt: 17. Soft  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: Edward/Bella  
Rating: T (Wahey!)

**Viola Cornuta** is my beta for this shit. Yeah, I love her. She's kind of a guru.

Disclaimer: I just own the stuff I do.

~~This was a request from **RedVelvetHeaven**. For you, bb. I hope I did you proud, and sweet~~

* * *

**Soft**

Circa 2006

Forks, Washington

Edward

_Approaching her, a svelte vision of cream and peach clothed in what really was kind of a hideous cerulean gown, I swept my trembling hand over the base of her spine and felt her shiver and arch into my touch. The vulnerability of her flesh was utterly sweet. The knocking in my knees showed my nervousness and belied the assuredness of my caress and my words._

_Patting the talisman in my pocket, a little silver teaspoon, totally mangled by my mind alone, I braced my shaky legs and leaned down to her, swept a tendril of coiled hair away from her flushing cheek and managed to ask in a smooth voice, "Bella, may I have this dance?"_

_I can do this!_

_~~ll~~_

I braced myself for rebuff.

At my touch, my query, Bella's porcelain shoulders lifted and a sigh ribboned down her body, shimmying her dress around her hips in an unconsciously sensual motion that caught my breath.

Otherwise, she didn't move.

The frown on my eyebrows deepened, my hand felt sweaty though I knew it could not be. Withdrawing my palm from the middle of her downy spin when all I really wanted was to sweep my lengthened fingers from side to side, and up and down that deliciously innocent nude expanse.

_Bella, may I have this dance?_

I mentally smacked myself! Who said that shit? I wasn't a gallant knight, a prince asking for the hand of his princess. I was no more than a young vampire who desired to dance with the woman he wished he could call his girlfriend.

Justly, I was a man of armor. Guarded, too thoughtful. Alternately bored out of my multitasking mind and excited beyond the tungsten tissue that made up my insides.

Pulled so viscerally in two by warring yearnings, perhaps I was just like every other adolescent.

_Amour_ for Bella had impelled me to her, to ask her, to wonder, if she would indeed dance with me. _Once_.

Readying myself for rejection as silent seconds reverberated through me, I ached. A vampire on the verge of maturity, I could have any damn thing I wanted, I was supposed to be the Master of _my_ Universe. Richer than Croesus, shrewder than humans, faster than sound – _Hell! I could even bend spoons with my thoughts alone, much to Emmett's annoyance._

These large hands of mine could kill.

Could they caress? Could they love?

Tapping the spoon in my trouser pocket, I remembered I could do anything. Even this?

I turned aside. Quaking anew. I couldn't handle Bella's denial.

My brothers and sisters held their breath, standing so still only the breeze from the super-sized ceiling fans against the neon lights made motion of them.

Bella made me feel edgy, nervous, somber.

Bella made me feel…_mortal._

A slim hand encircled my wrist, the manacle so hot her touch was a brand on my flesh, "Where are you going?"

Spluttering, I chewed and released my bottom lip, venom making miniature drops on my flesh, "I…_um_…just thought that-"

Shushing me with her index finger to my mouth, granting me my first taste of Bella the woman as opposed to her formerly girlish tomboy grit, grimy legs and wild hair of yesteryear, she announced, "Why, Edward, I thought you'd never ask."

When had Bella become so forward?

Relieved, overjoyed, anxious again, I ignored Emmett hooting like an obnoxious barn owl until Rosalie halted his shrieking with a discreet, well-placed sledge hammer blow to his head.

Bowing low – Jasper nodded his approval, Alice bounced on her tippytoes, trying not to clap – I stole Bella's hand back to my mouth. Palm side up. And pressed a lingering kiss upon delicate, ductile skin. I watched a new rhythm in her heartbeat raise her breasts against the satin of her gown.

_Swan Matches_ started up and the irony was not lost on me. _Alice_. She was smiling fit to burst into a million brilliantine bits. _Swan._ Bella was certainly that, surname aside. From a gangly child to a clumsy teen, and now a gorgeous woman who suddenly seemed to hold my heart, that thing made of scraps of ashes and charred dust, within her tender, exquisitely stirring grasp. _Matches. _ Her touch ignited an inferno of lust, a combustion of inflammatory ache to fire through me.

_I remember hours scraped away  
hospital blue paint off the wall,  
like it would take forever.  
_

Sateen words and leisurely pacing, I indoctrinated Bella to my dance.

Mindful of my arms that wanted to crush her form into me, I held Bella loosely, draping one forearm to her waist, the feel of which caused ample heat to ratchet through me, and the other wound around her shoulders. She was so fragile. So very human. Breakable. My firm steel hands desired to cup her against me, cradle her, and stroke all over the languor of her beautiful back bared beneath the midnight dress that made a low-lying ruffle at the base of her spine.

My forehead creased in consternation, I struggled to remain upright. Not to touch too hard, not to show my covetous need.

I knew I was coming across as aloof and uptight as Bella made her palm into a perfect warm clasp over my neck, smiling up at me with those startling earthen eyes, "Loosen up, Edward, I'm not going to hurt you."

_Lighting those swan matches to see  
just how long they'll take to burn out,  
like they could burn forever._

I laughed loudly, and only one balloon burst this time.

Mindful of her admonition, I stood back to yank my tie free, worked open the top two buttons of my shirt, revealed the lower recesses of my throat and just the top of my clean white wifebeater beneath.

Eyes widening and then sinking, Bella looked at the skin I had opened to her, her smile more plush and wet, her hand smoothing to my collarbone, her fingernails rasping lightly.

Her scant feathery touch compounded the detonation and bonfire of my passion.

With less caution, tilting my head to the side with a sheepish yet daring smirk, I bent my knees, held Bella's hips so that the sharp bones pinged off my adamant flesh, and situated her firmly against my groin.

I didn't worry, for once, that she would feel my erection.

Licking my lips, I met her curious, sweltering gaze, placed a hand ever lower on her back, just inside her dress's boundaries where the fabric rustled away from the light dimples atop her buttocks. Pressing gently into those inverted buttons. The other I tangled into her locks, unleashing a heaven-filled floral fruity fragrance I smelled and smelled and smelled.

Standing taller, reaching higher, Bella came against me completely. Keeping her hand to my chest, where surely she could feel the nothingness within, she lapped the nape of my neck and the savage waves of my hair, threading her fingers through.

_How we envied all those actors lives,  
how that cricket talked all night,  
like he could talk forever.  
_

For once I was not bothered by my vampirism. I was simply a young man with a young woman, falling in love. The idyllic trance of our bodies meeting, turning, straining and twisting subsumed everything but the instant mesh, the filigree web that bound us infinitely.

This was the start of the Cullen's last summer in Forks; each of us _children _would stop aging by mortal standards over the next year. Unable to hide our static nature from the locals we had known all our formative lives, we were bound to move on.

Having lived here all our lives, mere seconds compared to the perpetuity on the horizon, everything we had known was to be cast aside.

I would never see Bella again.

Emmett and Rosalie nudged against us, but they couldn't puncture the fathomless forcefield instantly built around me and Bella.

I heard nothing but the song and her heartbeat. Felt nothing but her inside my embrace. _Home._

_Then I thought I'd heard you in the hall,  
turns out that it wasn't you at all,  
I guess you had to be there.  
_

This might be the only chance I had to wrap Bella in my arms! Enraptured by the supple swinging of her hips, one of her legs between mine, the swish of her tresses, the exhale of her enchanting breath into my neck, I was determined to make every moment, each movement count.

Lowering my face to her ear, I whispered, "You feel so good, Bella."

My lips found the high plains of her cheek, the almond shuttered eclipse of her eyes that had closed with my utterance.

A tiny touch of my cool tongue to the corner of her mouth, nothing more than a chaste kiss, made her tremble and almost fall like a flittering autumn-turned leaf.

She became an ardent paramour, a teasing mistress with honeyed husky words, "Very suave, Edward. I wasn't sure you had it in you." By the glimmer that brightened Bella's lustrous umber eyes, I could tell she was reminiscing on all the ways I had tortured her, teased her, pulled her hair, tickled her, pretended to race her just to let her win….and the following years; awkward, juvenile, a half man-boy-vamp who didn't know whether to run away from her or ask her to be his.

My stomach clenched with desire, released with a laugh. Propelling her out to the ends of my fingertips, I grinned and folded her straight back into me. A full hug, another small kiss, a more forceful yet gentle tug on the generous sides of her bottom, but not fully cupping her, I was gladdened by her little gasp when she understood the ways in which she aroused me.

Like a man.

_And I remember how fast we ran  
I remember how fast we ran_

_We flew over fences.  
We dodged all the moving cars,  
and the dry Arizona faces,  
the dry Arizona faces.  
_

Our pattern shifted.

I didn't lead. She didn't follow. We swallowed harmony whole and widened around the diminishing dance floor.

Set alight, seeing eons flashing before my eyes, I made bold and pressed my closed mouth to hers.

First kiss.

A hum and small strum of tongue; we tucked subtly into each other's mouths. Lost and found.

No more foundering.

So sweet. The insides of my lips understood the brush of her tongue. The topside of my tongue found purchase, twining with hers.

We only kept dancing because my feet found music effortlessly as desire eddied through us.

I gathered the falling away of others. The shedding of myself. The baring of souls. White shards, velvet flesh, hot cold, given and returned ten thousand times over.

Wise as time, new as birth.

Palpable ease and tension too.

We were alone.

_And how we stayed awake all night long  
How we stayed awake all night long  
_

Succulent kisses, hands gathering closer, bending my knees and pulling her straight into me, I lifted Bella aloft.

We spun.

The web threaded. It's silken wires gossamer. Tough and unbreakable. Impenetrable. A maze with no ending and no beginning.

Begging. Pleading. _Please_, time.

_We flew over fences.  
We dodged all the moving cars,  
and the dry Arizona faces,  
the dry Arizona faces._

The song wound down. With a smile that could never be bigger, I ran my hands all over Bella's back, across her bottom, her neck, the very top swell of her breasts.

Not even a second had her perched sideways across my thighs, those velveteen legs bent, arch and coy and possessing sassiness all her own. Her heels glittered and cast a new enchantment over the most fine feet known to man and creature.

Bearing her weight with one hand right over the curve of her ass, as effortlessly as blowing dandelion fluff to wind, I dipped Bell with finesse.

The taut arc of her back bloomed ten thousand more prurient fantasies in my mind. Meeting untainted air, her beasts rounded up, her nipples were the most splendid buds beneath cloth. Throat thrown back, her waving hair making a wishing well of all I wanted as it reached so very near to the floor, I held her to dying beat of the music.

Bent to her and folded upon her like a crisp sheet, making my body fit hers.

Her throat beckoned me, that pale semicircle. Placing my parted lips like a sculpture, a monument to Bella's beauty, her heart, the infinite way she made me feel unjaded, I met her neck. Beseeching, with the sample of her flavor, for more time.

Smiling into her jaw, I lifted Bella.

Hurting with the disengagement to come, I started to step away. To part us. To pull the skein of angora that had spun around us asunder.

For a moment, Bella flailed. Then she grappled with my shirtfront, her fists crushing cloth. Hard and hot and fast she brought me back down to her. The lights were dimming, the gymnasium emptying, the night ending.

"I know who you are, Edward."

Shock galvanized me, she coddled me with arms that were newly robust and strong.

"What?"

"You think I grew up with you and your family, all these years, played with you, stayed at your house, observed you, and never understood?" Bella broiled, attempting to bring my arms back around her.

Mutely I nodded, then shook my head. _She could not know._

_Could she?_

She bobbed her head, "Yes."

"You don't hate me?" I found words within growls, hope inside of snarls.

Side to side, Bella tossed her head, and smiled this huge beautiful wide luminescent thing that sat right down solid in my soul, "No."

Pain pounded fresh. Goring me. Making me spin, wheel around. "We're leaving."

To my back, she approached. A hand. Just one. Against my shoulder. And her face, pressed fully into the canyon between muscle and clavicle, a permeating smile, a shake and a nod and a brazen question. _Now_ fueled me, inspired me, raised me, launched me and unhinged my dirty heart from its cold hearth home, "May I..._can_ I come with you?"

_YES!_

I rounded on Bella. Swooped her to me, turned her round and round to her gales of laughter that met its match with my unfettered, unlocked being, my happy grin!

_Could she?_

From the sidelines I caught a motion. Alice. Nodding.

_Yes, she could._

_

* * *

  
_

_~~Lovely...no?~~_

The song is _**Swan Matches**_, by Grand Archives. It's really very beautiful.

As ever, enormous thanks – more than that, really – for your reviews. I am awestruck. Keep 'em coming, I've got fourteen more of these fuckers to do.

I think **Platonic **is next, and that's ALL you're getting from me. _That's what she said._


	12. Platonic

The Twilight Twenty-Five  
Prompt: 11. Platonic  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: Jacob/May  
Rating: M (really T, just some bad language)

**Viola **kicks my ass, but then she kisses it, and she beta's beautifully. So we're all good.

Disclaimer: I gotta say, SM…WTF? I don't own this. You do. Damn fine mess you made for me to clean up.

~~So, I've done the unthinkable, again. Stop rolling your eyes like Edward and just read; have I steered you wrong yet? Okay, and this is not canon, so don't shit yourselves entirely, just trying to right a wrong~~

For **Kari**. There's just a little bit of something **Broken Doll **in here, I think.

* * *

**Platonic**

Circa 2006, 2017

Forks, Washington and other locations

Jacob

With one look, I knew her inside and out. And this infant knew me too. All else disintegrated while the form of a glittering platinum delicate cage wrapped us together. My anger, my sadness, my loneliness, even some of my stupid adolescence gave way to…_fucking Hell!_ It felt like Heaven on Earth, some huge mesmerizing pull, or some such shit.

I was hers.

Jacob Black belonged to May Carlie Cullen; a tiny, tight-fisted, snow-white, perfect baby girl. A half-human, half-vampire. Who drank tepid blood from a baby bottle.

It was never going to be easy. Such was my life.

I snapped to her like a rubber band on the wrist of a person using the old method to quit smoking. Like Harry Clearwaterhad utilized that tried-and-true practice too late in life.

The band bit and stung and remained.

The wires between us were elastic, they moved when we did, but always the precious metal web linked us.

Imprinted.

Everything with Bella made perfect sense! The magnetism that drew me to her, her inability to thrust me aside -- though I'd deserved it time and again -- my need to see to her well-being hinging on the draw of her presence…it was all because of the baby she would birth.

I felt so ashamed of my actions, my pugnacious scrappy ignorance and stampeding and snorting and stomping between Bella and Edward. Trying to break them apart when their togetherness and love would create the one thing capable of holding me to this world.

May Cullen.

The genetics inside Bella, the child to be…I'd been so misguided, blind and ignorant to think Bella would ever feel for me the way I'd _thought_ I loved her.

The breathtaking, gut-punching, _heart-stopping_ – for real, in Edward and Bella's case – feeling of being and belonging to only one fucking person for all of time, and maybe even in the past too!

What Edward and Bella had, I got it now. And I was a dick for ever attempting to destroy their otherworldly union.

The coil that helixed invisibly, invincibly between me and May grounded me, and sent me up so high I floated on pure peace, love, guardianship. _That_ was what I knew the moment I laid eyes on the baby, the being I had hated, convinced it was a beast to be killed.

_Man, God or who-the-fuck-ever really was a sick motherfucker to make this shit up._

Hell no, there was nothing sexual about it! Hey, I'm no sexual deviant. I'm not a fucking sick individual. That I imprinted on a newborn baby only meant, until she grew to her womanly stature, I was a doting uncle, a devoted elder brother, a keeper of her soul, the custodian of her heart I never touched nor squandered.

When Edward and Bella returned from their first foray truly as man and wife during which the others had hinted, "_Oh they've just gone out for a hunt," _complete with Cullen smirks all around, like we all really didn't know what those crazy kids were getting up to, I felt, for the first time, no irrational jealousy, no fear or hate.

But I couldn't resist goading Edward, just a bit, "You know, _Dad_, this is a far better gift than letting me drive your Aston Martin Vanquish," all the while walking-rocking across the floor while little May slumbered in my arms.

But for the fact I held his daughter, I knew Edward would have lunged at me.

What can I say? I was still hardly more than a kid myself. No matter, _sometimes_, that I was Alpha of my pack, that I was about to enter a war of fantastical proportions, that I loved a half-breed mystical child and would lay down my life for her with the very first earth-shattering look, her initial ear-splitting howl.

I was still a teenager, with so much growing up to do.

Those were the early days.

Patience had never been a friend of mine. Now, it wasn't even a question. Every hour, day, month; each milestone, new word, laugh, look, experience went by so fucking quickly with May's speeded-up growth.

The faster she matured the more worried we all became. Inside the Cullen manse, I became a fixture. One who was not always welcome. But at least Rosalie had laid off her mutt jokes, and there was always Emmett to watch football with.

The food wasn't half bad either.

And I didn't have to do laundry or worry about running out of clean clothes from my incessant shape-shifting seam-popping due to Esme's beneficent nature.

Jasper still freaked me out a bit. More than anything, I was concerned about his hair…I mean, _really_.

Alice gave me the stink eye every chance she got, but only because I gave her migraines. I wanted to offer her an Excedrin but figured that wouldn't go over so well with the spurious sprite.

Bella and Edward took to parenthood like eels to water. And I never missed an opportunity to tell them so. When I was really bored I called Edward a leech or an ass-blowing bloodsucker, and he was mine for a good brawl or a lengthy marathon through the Fork's forest.

Carlisle liked to question me at length, sometimes he fucking bored me to tears as I sat in his study, longing to pace, run, race, answering him in monosyllabic mutters. No doubt he was a smart motherfucker, _but damn_! His curiosity was as un-fucking-ending as his life!

Eh, he was May's grandfather, so what could I really do?

Charlie came round, thanks to my big mouth. But I really think I did Bella a favor there.

Billy accepted the nascent brother-like nature of my relationship with May because, _what the hell, _this imprinting curse-blessing was really his and my forefather's fault.

Still May changed at a fucking frightening rate! Every day an inch or two, a word became a paragraph, a sentence read one day turned into the entire damn book the next.

The daily measuring made me want to scream! _Get your hands off her, she's mine!_ At the same time I knew Carlisle and Edward and Bella and even bitch-face Rosalie were just as frightened as I was.

The Volturi just compounded the problem. There was no fucking way they were gonna' get their toxic Halloween hands on my May. No. Fucking. Way.

I became unglued. Bella was nearly unhinged. And then I was not only surrounded by the Cullens, there was fucking veritable army of vampires underfoot at the family home turned command post**! ** Not all of them vegetarians either.

Because it just couldn't be easy, could it?

When Bella had handed that tiny knapsack to me in preparation for her and Edward's deaths, I almost fucking lost it.

I wanted to stay and fight with my pack; as their leader it felt like ripping the tribal lore right out of my hulking skeleton to even consider abandoning Sam, Seth, Embry, Quil, and Leah to whom I owed so much.

But May was my prime consideration. My past, future, life. I couldn't let her die.

The lily-livered cloaked cunts ran, _or flew_, scared in the face of the destruction of their immaculate reputation, taking with them their dagger-like hands and the vise of their poisoned endless search for power. Corrupt fish-faced fuckers better damn run!

It took hours for my hackles to settle, for me to return to my human form from willing-to-kill savage creature; even Edward's comforting words did little to tame me.

Nahuel's existence was enlightening. A collective sigh of relief resounded when we learned of his aging only to manhood. The aftermath of the battle seemed too perfect, all wrapped up with a pretty silk bow, a grosgrain ribbon like my sister used to wear in her hair.

Old and wise before my youthful age, I waited for the other shoe to drop.

One more year passed. For twelve months, my thoughts were as heated as my skin, in overdrive, like Bella's beast-truck pushed to the limits of acceleration. How to be with May as her growth escalated. To ignore the less than prudent thoughts others had on my imprinting with an infant-toddler-preschooler. I never doubted myself, but some of them did. Even though I was more accepted, kind of one of the fold, I still felt like a curio, a totem of the past they understood even less than I did their history. They continually complained about my eating habits – Ha! As if they had any room to talk! And it was more than a bit creepy watching May suck down a bottle full of thick crimson blood, weirder yet when she traded the bottle for a sippy cup, and it was just completely fucking bizarre when she declined the prepared stuff altogether and foraged for her own wild prey.

This shit was more peculiar than a Quentin Tarantino movie!

Rosalie liked to pull out the Febreze and spritz around the room in my wake.

Ever the bitch.

She was an itch I'd like to scratch, with my wolfish claws all over that fake-model face.

Yeah, I was welcomed. Wouldn't have mattered if I weren't. May was meant to be my home.

Until those niggling thoughts finally made sense.

And I left.

The snafu was I wanted to be with May day and night, by the second, minute and hour. I could barely contain myself from running to her, checking on her, mothering her like a fucking clucking hen, _anything_ just to be in her surrounds all the damn time. And that just wasn't healthy. Not when she had so much to experience.

_This age shit really sucked balls!_

I abandoned my heart.

My soul.

My little girl, my sister, my friend, my niece.

Now I understood why Edward had tried to thrust himself away Bella.

_Anything for love._

I took to the north, and then tried the Southwest regions. New Mexico was hot, and I liked that. There was a housing boom, and my strength did me well in the construction trade.

Every morning, with sun beating down through the unshaded window of my bedroom, I clenched my eyes and wondered at the cloudy rainy gray skies of Forks. And what May was doing. And how sadly thoughtful she had looked, all of three years old and already on her way to pre-pubescence.

I pined.

Not like I lost weight or became _pale_ or any of that namby pamby lovesick bullshit -- because I still ate like a horse, and I would always have my rusty coloring – but the absence of May, by my own choice,ate through me anyway.

I was nameless. Not a wolf and barely even a man. Working odd jobs until I found my callingas a high-rise window fitter, providing that needed thrill of danger. I was agile enough do it without ropes and harnesses. There were no more cliff dives, no more immortal skirmishes. There was very little of May in my life, and I needed a taste of peril to take my mind off of that terrible fact.

A nobody.

A dogsbody.

Jake-of-all-trades.

I fetched.

They said, "Jump!" and I asked, "How high?"

It was just another hoop to hop through, wasting years, existing a bit, biding time.

I mastered my temper and arrogance, _sort of._

Humility was bit strange.

Six years and I was simply hurting. Making a life away from May went against the confines, the emotional constraints of imprinting. But I did it so she could grow up outside of the mark of my presence. I wanted more than anything for May to be a girl who was not bound from birth like some medieval bride-gift, an arranged paranormal love match to a man she had no choice but to accept. I needed her to discover herself, have friends, a normal life -- as typicalas half-human half-vampire girl could be -- hobbies and family without my interference.

So she could grow, inside and out.

So I wouldn't suffocate her with this love that immediately burst over and into me, much like when I shape-shifted to my primitive form. Archaic and true and time-hard, me to her was a permanent transformation.

I knew I'd return to May, there was no other path. She was who I wanted, but why the fuck did everything in my life have to be so complicated? Why couldn't I have imprinted on a grown woman? Why the hell did I have to belong to a long line of shifters in the first place? Why had Bella moved to Forks, why had the Cullens awakened the prophecy of the Cold Ones?

All the time I was away, the Cullens moved about the country, never too close to me. Transforming far too rapidly while the rest of her family's appearances never wavered, May was bit in the ass again by Father Time. Sometimes they moved en masse, occasionally they split into smaller groups; Edward, Bella, and May always remained together.

My heart crawled restlessly with need for her.

I had two options; wait until she reached super-speedy genetic age, or live on my own, dying softly inside for another ten years until she was actually, in the count of time, seventeen years old.

I spent most my nights ripping my guts out about the conundrum.

In the end, as always, there was no other option.

There was very little pleasure in my life. All of it was tied up in her: the rare phone calls – I was never much one for talking and didn't think I could bear the sound of her voice across the wires and so far away -- the letters that started as crayon drawings, then bubbly pink words on lined stationery, metamorphosing to missives in a more calligraphic script, which rivaled Edward's own pristine penmanship. Putting my sloppy scrawl to shame.

She understood everything about us. Questioned my history, wondered at the tribe, told me of visits to my aging father who I missed like an ache in my marrow.

Eventually our letters morphed again. They became notes of need and barely withheld love.

Not that her writ words were ever lascivious, they were pure May. The innocence of her wrapped itself around a sensuality of spirit, quite possibly flesh too but I would not know that. I had no pictures of her development, aside from a few I'd taken when I left of us together in her quickly passing toddler period. The visual reminder would have made my forced truancy impossible.

_Anything for love. _

I was still a virgin, for damn sure I'd wait for my girl to become a woman. Not that I was a monk, not like Edward and his, _what_?, fucking near-on a century of celibacy? Hell no!

Ever a boy, I took matters into my own hands; I mean, a body has needs regardless of the heart's desires. During those instances I thought of nothing in particular, or my future with a full grown, emotionally matured May. Not specifics, because, hell at this rate I needed hardly more than the idea of a simple kiss to get me off.

May's letters aided and abetted my manly needs.

_I've seen photos of you when you were younger, before you changed….you had long hair; have you grown it out? _

_I still remember the tone of your voice and each word you spoke to everyone like it was just hours ago. I hear you singing to me, low baritone and husky, and full of lullabies to aid my sleep._

_Your lips conjure visions of endless nights inside of your embrace. When will you come home, Jacob?_

The agony of waiting and wanting to be near her reached huge fucking unbearable proportions!

Finally, May was forever seventeen in body if not yet years to my stagnant eighteen…_at least there were some rewards to this fucking insane fantastical time warp of monsters. _I would live and remain untouched by the passage of time so long as my love did, indefinitely.

By the calendar, I was twenty-eight. Nine years had passed since I'd seen her. She had reached physical and emotional maturity**,** and I was unable to give any more than an additional two years.

Having held myself apart, needy, agonizing, alone, for so long, I just couldn't stand this nonexistence any longer.

I'd done my level best to give May the opportunity to grow within herself, to adjust to the overwhelming thing we could never deny. The chain of silver that linked us together would only become kinked and crooked and warped beyond repair unless I made my way to her. We loved each other surpassing anything this world had ever witnessed; who was I to begrudge the platinum-brilliant map laid out in stepping stone stars a millennium before I was even born?

I had willfully missed her maturation, resenting the mysticism that made our love such an enchanted thing that it was hex and healing. I had trudged on in a world that could never really know me.

I regretted I'd foregone her growing up.

Everyone was in Forks again for just a short time. Aside from Charlie and my people, the Cullens kept their distance from town and its residents lest their eerily unchanged features and physiques cause well-founded rumors.

I thought it best I re-make May's acquaintance where I had left, in the comforting surrounds of her childhood home. A place we were both as familiar with as we were foreign, somewhat, to each other.

I called first, and asked if I would be allowed to visit May this night. Esme's mile-wide-smile could be heard through the phone.

Showering, shaving, harnessing the long straight lengths of my obsidian hair into a leather tie at my neck, I dressed in dark jeans, a black t-shirt, and old Adidas.

I fixed dinner for myself and my dad. Wheeled him up to Sue's so he could watch the Monday Night Football, and counted my weighty footfalls as I made my way to the beloved Rabbit Bella and I had repaired.

Down the unending, winding drive. The lights were lit. I parked.

I felt like a fucking teenager while I sat there in my dark car fiddling with my hair trying to decide whether or not to untie the knot that held it to the nape of my neck.

_She'd liked me with longer hair._

I unleashed my ponytail and twined the leather around my wrist.

_I really am turning into a complete fucking pussy._

Took the stairs more slowly than I'd imagined I would.

The blinds were drawn.

May rested against the door.

That band about my wrist, the one that squeezed my heart until it thumped with too much love and blood, tightened.

I settled against the porch railing. She was so bright I could hardly look at her!

But under my lashes, I took May in.

No doubt about it, she was a woman. With long brushed out tarnished copper waves that sat like satin over her shoulders, legs that shouldn't have existed, hips I knew would now nearly fill my huge hands, her face had lost its plumpness, but her rosy lips had not.

They smiled.

I could not meet her eyes.

She had to come to me first, _had to feel what I did._

_I had to know!_

I stood away.

She approached, so certain.

_All woman._

"I'm scared, May," I whispered. Not daring to look, wanting so much to touch! She was luminous, not because of her silken skin but because of her soul that glowed! Her eyes, when I met them, danced up the wet sand of First Beach.

Two steps closer, and her voice rang clear like the highest chords of a reedy flute, "Of what you'll see, or what I'll feel, Jacob?"

There was no way I could stop the forward motion of my feet, my eyes cast down to her much smaller bare toes and then darting back up to her curiously bright eyes, "_Both."_

"All that happened before me is moot. Every moment you lived since me was because of us." A statement of fact.

I nodded and my hair brushed over my shoulders, and May reached towards it, tangling the ends between her fingers. My breath shuddered, fire burrowed into me like hot charcoals searing my heart. My groin.

When she stroked me on the bare skin of my bicep, I quivered and almost fell. _To be touched!_ Her hand cupping my cheek made me faint, I closed my eyes against the boiling depths of hers. I cried, silent straight tears that found the corners of my mouth, wetness that was brushed away by May's fingers.

Clasping me nearer to her, she gifted me all I had missed! Her ability to cross body and mind enabled her to show me, in flashes of light and green and meadow and gold and laughter each thought, moment, milestone I had wasted!

Ending, in mere minutes, with me standing here, and inside her heart, her mind.

"I know why you left. I know why you stayed away, my love," I smiled, a heartbroken healing thing when she used that endearment of her father's. "Come to me now, Jacob, you are my man."

My lips caved and sought, and tears turned brilliant liquid into lucid want.

May, against me! May under me. May's lips crushed to mine, licking entering inviting!

I turned her to the railing and lifted her legs around my lean waist and stroked every single solid waifish ripe inch of her flesh.

Belting out a laugh, May arched her throat to the moonlit skylit night and jested, with her fists making bundles of my hair while I plundered as close as I dared to her beautiful breasts, "You grew your hair!"

I shook it out, ground against her. The laugh turned to a gasp.

Then to plucking, sensual and slow and learning.

Nothing more, not that night.

Kisses after eons of solitude were enough.

_Waiting._

We'd waited so fucking long.

We would wait some more.

Because I wanted to court my sweetheart properly.

To revel in the man she'd made of me.

Of course I made a mess of things. Fumbled a lot, swore more than I should have, but thankfully May forgave me all. _Well, it's not really like she had a choice. That was my own private joke._

Alternately laconic or just stumbling over word vomit, May was more forthright and much more sure than I!

Smart as a whip, May was too intelligent for me, no doubt. But I had experience and years on my side.

We balanced.

She was a wise-ass in her own right, but I guess that's what happened when you were raised by a family of vampires with a pack of wolves as your playmates.

May certainly never took any of my guff.

Eventually we found our footing. No power on earth could have stopped us.

The yearning to touch, wind, wrap, to be naked and inside her, and her over me, under me, beside me in bed hastened my proposal and our engagement.

_Hell, I was a man. And this damn thing had gone on long enough._

Married so simply. At First Beach on a supremely sunny day so that, _fuck, _we didn't need lanterns or sparklers or decorations because the gathered Cullens and their vamp friends glittered enough to shine out the entire Western seaboard! Between Edward and Bella, barefoot, resplendent and simply dressed in a draped ivory gown with one pink blushing lily in her hair, like her mother's own flush of yesteryear, May made her way to me.

Our enormous smiles matched.

Our hands clasped.

Bella and Edward released their daughter to me.

Vampire to wolf.

None thought it would happen, least of all me.

Imprinted. We were bound. Our heritage, our warring lineage linked forever in possibly the most important and powerful alliance of the supernatural world.

That mattered, for sure it did, because it kept the skank-ass Volturi from breathing down our necks with their corpse rotting threats.

But the most important thing was our lives could start.

Here and now.

La Push. Forks.

Cullens to Blacks.

Jacob to May.

_Anything for love._ I understood that now.

Man to wife.

_Everything for love._

_

* * *

  
_

~~Let me tell you, this was bitch to write. I enjoyed it, I own it and I'm really proud of it, but it was hard work. Vi and I spent hours grueling over how to make Jacob x May less icky and more lovely (not to mention the fucking timeline!). Regardless of your feelings for Jacob/BD, how'd I do?~~

Now, hold on to your scanties, because **Sour** is coming up. And to date, I have _loved_ writing this next one the most (I think?)!


	13. Sour

The Twilight Twenty-Five  
Prompt: 18. Sour  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: It's a surprise, sorry Jes, but I ain't telling.  
Rating: M (m'course)

This is for **Viola**!

A little bit of somethin' somethin' for **blondie** too.

* * *

**Sour**

Circa 2009

Castine, Maine

Emmett

_~~ll~~_

**Dyce Head**

A born and bred man of salt and sea and coastline, I'd first come to Castine, Maine, wet behind the ears, from my family's canning business.

More than a product of the factory spilling out fish guts, I wanted to build the boats that brought the cold-blooded finned and scaly creatures to harbor, which we cured and packed. At eighteen, I'd set off to the Maine Maritime Academy to learn my trade. Taking in the sleek lines of the smaller sailboats crafted in the open-air workshops, I found a new love. Two in fact. I paired up with an Italian exchange student. He shared his love of gondolas to my more seaworthy ships. More than that, Demetri of the long wavy smooth black hair, the loamy skin and eyes black as the richest olives showed me I was never more masculine, hardy _and_ sensual than when I was with him.

Spending the entire year working through night after night, breaking for hot erotic sex against new sanded boards so the woodsy smell of shaved leavings shuffled under our boot shod feet, curling up scents of forests and open water. I remembered the first time I'd made love to him. Watching the flat muscles of his arms bared beneath the fraying cut-to-shoulder sleeves of the faded flannel I'd lent him round up with each motion of the hand-held plane, I groaned loudly, the sound reverberating throughout the high timber ceiling of the shed.

Wide of eye, Demetri turned to me, dropping the heavy wood and metal tool to the ground, a motion that was most unlike the care and attention he gave the implements of our art. An arch smile curved his wide, Tuscan red sunset lips, and his panther-like stalking met me as I braced myself in a wide stance like a sailor during a storm at sea. My world turned topsy-turvy, sex like the current that fed from the Bermuda's to the Cape eddied around us so tight and hard and swirling fast and hot over cold and _what the fuck!_

The panther pounced and crashed, licked and mewled and hissed and spit into his palms before working his large calloused Mediterranean sun-worn palms up and down my fucking leaking cock he had brought out in the open by tearing the flap of my jeans nearly in two and shoving them right down to the dusty rough cement floor!

I thought I was trying to pull him away when I grabbed his ponytail. Instead I yanked him closer, clenched my ass against the huge groping hold he had there, and moaned so loudly he laughed around my cock, making me cum in about two minutes fast sucking all down his throat with a thrust-lunge-thrust.

That was just the beginning.

I'd never been with a woman, for fucking sure I'd never been with a man. And now that was the only option! We were insatiable, our need to fuck almost overrode our desire to finish out this final year, complete our catamaran, so we could break waves with her beautifully hand tooled prow, together, at large.

I must have been a naïve motherfucker, because the day after graduation, Demetri left with no more than a goodbye fuck back to his motherland and the boyfriend he'd left a year ago.

He was my first love. My only. By no means my last lay. Suddenly Maine felt too small, isolated, insular.

I took to the seas as I'd planned. Alone. Perhaps it was written in the stars as I navigated south, following my compass. Luckily each port of call found a willing man. My fleshly thirst quenched, I grew accustomed to ignoring my heart.

Not so much had changed in the ten years I'd spent, sailing the world, oftentimes a one-man captain of my own vessel.

Now I was older and much more cautious. Too many capsizings almost made me lose my sea-legs. I still needed to be near the ocean.

None recognized me, though old man Newton still operated the small clapboard post office on his own. And Miss Esme ran the only café in town. From a skinny college kid, I'd become a man. Two day's stubble littered my chin, and I scratched my jaw, enjoying the tingle on my fingertips as I set about my work. While a student I'd had no more than hen's-scratching on my jaw. Working the wheel, hauling the lines, weighing the anchor had made a towering toned rippling bear of my adolescent frame. My hair was longer, no more a cadet's crewcut. The jet black waves littered with the beginnings of silver veins.

Returning to the lighthouse whose green gold sloping fields in spring had been the second place I'd fucked Demetri, the setting had not lost its lure. There was still a certain romance to the job; the autonomy, the seclusion, the peace broken only by the cresting surge of squalling waves beating timelessly against the jagged coast, eroding the roots of pines that were far taller than houses and bent more and more each year, inclining towards the Atlantic, as my heart always did.

The foghorn was a heavy deep bass that set right down in my chest, stomach and groin. It had been three months since I'd known the sinew and ligature, ropey muscle like sailor's knots and lunging dicks like yardarm thrusts.

My erection stood at full mast. All because of a warning bellow from within the old growling depths of my keep.

Dyce Head Lighthouse sat above the ocean like a proud guardian. Unlike my boats and the sea, this structure was manly. Pretty much fucking phallic and straight up as my dick. Put into operation in 1828 of stone under brick, the tower had girth and height. We sat at the mouth of Penobscot Bay, formerly guiding lumber to port and northwest to Bangor.

Now I just made certain no one ran ashore. Not even the pompous assholes from the yacht club.

I fucking loved the ocean and her vista in every way she came. Grey and hazy, frozen and foggy, black with troubling racing clouds and bright silver lightning streaks over white-tipped breakers, sparkiling and calm on a morning of full sunshine. This scarcely inhabited peninsula would be home for a very long time.

Not a thinker, but a doer, this occupation suited me.

This was one of the oldest working lighthouses in the United States. I spent my days, perpetually monastic in the trappings of mechanic, construction worker, photographer of seas, seer for mariners, weatherman, sailor, repairman, groundskeeper.

The house at the side had been built in 1870 as captain's quarters. Well maintained, it was far too large for me, and I rented it out, preferring the small living quarters at the base of the obelisk where I felt much more at home, the near claustrophobic low-roofed space like the cabin of the many sailboats I'd built.

Daily I kept a log of the lighthouse's workings, my preservation of him, and a journal that was little more than my daily doings and observations.

Delving too deeply into my psyche only made for heartbreak.

It was fucking cold as hell, but the wharf was rotten and the boards festering with damp, so I put on my waders and installed a new landing. Went to the marina and sailed back my baby._The Rosalie, Siren of the Sea_, to dry-dock her for the winter.

While I was getting out of my damn near lilliputian claw footed bath after a cold morning in the water, tying everything up nice and neat, a tour group descended.

I dinted my toe against the tin tub, clambering all six foot three wide-shouldered me of out it; I didn't even think the fucking thing had a right to call itself a bath!

Swearing and wrapping a threadbare pale blue towel over my hips, I opened the door and aimed for half-naked hospitality, instead of incensed wet nude pissed-off lighthouse keeper.

The fucking frigid December air puckered my nipples right up bright, made my short and curlies fearful against hypothermia as I ushered the troupe inside with a curt welcome and sodden chagarined, "I'll just get dressed."

A hushed mumble crawled like the melting drips of an icicle to my red wet ear, "I rather like you this way."

My skin goosebumped with more than the chill air, as I wheeled about and tried to place that low hot sassy voice to its owner.

Him.

He eyed me up like he wanted to eat me for dinner.

This was a first. I was usually the pursuer, after Demetri.

He stood head and shoulders above the rest of the milieu who were quaking off the tundra-cold and peeling away the hundreds of layers of wool and leather that shielded them.

In a dark blue down vest over a plaid shirt upon indigo jeans, which sat worn and soft in all the right places like his firm ass and his obviously well-endowed cock and his scuffed suede boots, _he_ stared me straight in the eye, and then licked his pale pink long lips as if tasting my cum there.

My towel drooped lower, I probably pretty much fucking drooled.

The docent cleared her throat as my terrycloth covering revealed not only the cliff-like V of my abs but also the growing trail of treasure hair that wound down to my rigid dick.

Embarrassed and called to action, I sped to my room. Pulled on yesterday's clothes, and met the throng in my postage stamp sized parlor.

Parched and extremeIy aware of the tall whiskey-haired man strolling around and inspecting my scant belongings, the bits and pieces I'd collected on my travels, with a coital smile lounging on his mouth, I offered drinks because I couldn't very well imbibe alone when I was supposed to be showing around the amassed Massholes.

The mugs of Tom Collins shook a bit in my huge hands; this was a most unlikely predicament, an impromptu cocktail party. The steward started to decline my offering, but thought better of it when I looked at her pleadingly with my big blinking ice-blue eyes and only one dimple tugging at my cheek.

_Didn't take much to turn a head._

Mr. Fucking Big Blond Beautiful shook his head with a very low, rough refusal, "I prefer to drink alone." His raw sex appeal was compounded by the vice of his voice that tightened in my abs and my nads.

A couple drinks later, all around, _almost_, the group departed, leaving me popping up to the window to watch Lusty Eyes and Ass lope away. The calf-deep snow hardly deterred the grace of his walk, the tight clenching of his thighs and buttocks was branded in my mind.

In the galley-sized kitchenette, I made another batch of drinks and lay down at the fireside.

I was so fucking hard my cock made a permanent stretching in the material of my corduroys. In my haste to dress earlier, I'd left off underwear and now the copper zipper ratcheted against my shaft, making me ache for the touch of another man to take away the sting, to add a more arousing one. Shucking off my boots, hands behind my head, I let the wash of warm creamy alcohol and blazing heat push their fiery waves over me until my bones melted into slumber, and my erection glared at me like a one-eyed snake.

That mother fucker hadn't seen action in way too long.

I could have sworn the bastard in my pants hissed at me, but it was just a log settling down to charcoal and sizzling out a burst of blue oxygen.

I wasn't in the mood to jerk-off. I wanted to suck and be fucked. I wanted to rip off the clothes of that walking god and push myself so far up into him, into that deep ridged inferno, he wouldn't be able to walk straight or talk for days.

_Holy fuck!_ His wanton hungry look had been unmistakable. But I could have been wrong. I'd suffered from the dementia cause by solitude before, and really it was far more likely that I was the sole homosexual in a thirty mile radius than to come across the most insatiably gorgeous man in my lighthouse, famished for all his looks and few words for me.

He was probably just another sightseer, already bound back down Route 1 to whatever hellhole he'd crawled out of. Yeah, _Massawhoshits_, no doubt.

He hadn't seemed like a tourist, though. His questions were precise, smart, learned. He leaned into the floor like a man who had intimately known the swallow of waves beneath foot. Walking up the steep narrow spiral staircase to the lens proper, he had attached himself to one of the older ladies, taking her elbow and murmuring stories of other New England lighthouses to keep her mind off an obvious fear of heights.

By the fifth night I'd had enough of hibernation.

**The Ruffled Grouse**

Whistling, kicking at the drifts to make fluffs of sand-soft snow billow out white cumulus against the sky, which was already midnight at five thirty in the evening, I hopped over the waist high picket fence surrounding my property, my way lit by the slow spinning three ton pineapple shaped prisms of my personal lantern one hundred and thirty-four feet in the air. Calling my fellow seamen safely ashore.

Left my truck in the drive. I hadn't put chains on her yet, and hell, I could get from one end of Castine to the other in ten minutes flat by foot.

Cold crisp frozen fog, the crunch of deep snow compacted to sleety glaciers.

Walking down Main Street I took it all in with hungry eyes. The grungy-hippie clothiers Coyote Moon, the Morning Stop Café, Seafarers Restaurant, Leah's Cards and Penobscot Gifts, Castine Harbor Antiques. The populace was a mix of tried and true Mainers and generational families: fishermen, farmers, storekeepers, as well as undergrads from MMA and moneyed yuppies who commuted from Bangor International Airport, _what a joke_, to the wider world.

Lining the residential streets, all four of them, restored heritage farmhouses were ablaze with Douglas Fur Christmas trees decorated old-style with handmade ornaments, too much tinsel, popcorn and cranberry streamers.

The town was festooned in an odd mix of gaudy and twee.

Come summer I knew the road heading in and out of town would be lined with ply board stands piled with corn on the cob and homegrown tomatoes. My stomach already growled at the thought of the ripe produce.

Dressed to keep out the cold, I had added more mass to my already enormous build; woolen cap, gloves, jeans that were flannel lined, LL Bean boots.

Students in thick-cabled woolen sweaters milled around beneath the streetlamps, wondering which of the two bars to patronize.

This quaint village was nothing more than a crossroads off the beaten path of Route 1, which ran from north to south, shuttling tourists up and down the Eastern seaboard.

At the door of The Ruffled Grouse, my student haunt, I looked back to my lighthouse, an isolated beacon in the drowning night, picturing the ocean's edge, the granite cliffs for which Maine was known, the eddies and currents and rocky outcroppings enclosing hidden whirlpools and salty caves of shimmery dripping stalagmites and stalactites.

Bracing myself, I entered the heavy door whose small windows were sketched with feathers of ice on the outside. I needed human company.

Stomped the sticky snow from my boots, and blew my nose into a clean white hanky. My cheeks were red I could feel the frost melting from my day's growth of stubble. Using the tail of my shirt to clear the lenses of my fogged glasses, I shuttered and opened my eyes, blinked icicles from my long eyelashes, tried to wipe the blurriness from my vision.

Putting my spectacles back on, I focused on the orange-yellow flaming heat roaring out of the open brazier to the right of the door.

Then followed the shatter of a glass behind the bar.

_Holy fucking shit! I'd thought he was a vacationer! _

The pale malt-whiskey-haired man who had featured in all of my fantasies most recently looked up with scotch eyes from cleaning up the crisp thick fragments of a tumbler crusting the bartop.

My heart sped from its thud-thud-thud of cold.

My cheeks flared more.

I grinned loosely.

I kind of felt like puking.

Singularly gorgeous and formerly possessing majestic presence, he looked nervous.

Sweeping shards into a damp towel, he straightened as I made my way to the bar and shouldered myself to the forefront.

Amidst the clangor of talk, the whisper of the radio, the banking of pool balls and the clinking of glasses, his voice stood out and dripped like fiery alcohol down my throat to the roiling of my stomach, "What can I get you?" Recovered, he smiled that man-eating curve, sank his teeth into his bottom lip, and eyed me up and down.

Burly, broad, built, I quivered and held onto the lip of the bar to answer, "Whiskey sour, please." At least my baritone voice held firm.

Laughter gleamed in his tiger-eyes, "Had you pegged right, then."

What the hell did that mean? Sure, I was gay and fucking happy with that, but I certainly wasn't a sissy, and damn near half the native female populace, probably more, had already swooned with just one look and be-dimpled smile from me.

I frowned and drummed my fingertips on the polished oak surface, anxiety resurging like a tsunami up my abdomen to the sit in my pounding heart, my choking throat, my bursting cock.

With his back turned, I surveyed the seascape he presented.

He was slim, tall, well-muscled, hair swept back messily from his forehead with a slight curl over his ears, like a fall apple, a glossy skinned Macintosh fresh from the orchard; the color was nearly strawberry blond dipped into softening caramel and left to glaze. Shiny.

Setting my glass down, with more than a fair share of whiskey, he quirked his head to the side and looked up and down the bar to the other patrons, gauging orders, taking note, regaling locals, talking up the town's politics.

All the while he stood before me, pretending to ignore me. A sidelong seditious look, a lopsided smile, and I knew he was paying attention to me. Waiting.

Taking a deep swig of my drink, I welcomed the harsh swill and asked, "You were at Dyce Head?" I knew it was he, but the fucking grinning bastard made me all kinds of nervous and sweaty; it was the only opening I could think of.

Focusing on me completely so I sank back to my stool in order not to reach across the freshly cleaned bar to guide his mouth right down over mine, he licked those goddamn fantastic lips, which spoke of all the dirty deeds he wanted to do to my body, "Yeah, I wanted to check out the _promontory_," the slick gorgeous devil winked at me! My cock knew what he was saying, but my brain had a hard time catching up.

Ice chinked in my glass. My lips pursed and opened to release a gasp of air, and my word vomit knew no filter, "Cold as a witch's tit out there tonight."

He laughed, placed a long hand over my own, wrapping us both around my tumbler just as I had imagined our clenching fists combining and running up and down my throbbing sinking thrusting wet cock. Lowly so his voice was nothing but a rumble in his chest as if he was thinking the same thing, he served a near orgasm to me, "I've known colder."

_Fuck me._

This man was testosterone overload!

Answering a call, he cracked the cap off a bottle effortlessly,and I could have sworn it wasn't even a twist-off. Blowing across the mist, which clouded out the opening with pursed lips that would look just fucking right and hot all over the head of my cock, he sat the bottle to the bar-top and slid it down to another customer all the while holding me like a willing prisoner in his gaze that was surely as golden bright as my Fresnel lens, "Cabin fever?"

"Something like that," I accepted another drink.

"Maybe you shouldn't be alone down there in that lighthouse, eh?" I blushed_. I fucking blushed! _ Maybe it was the fire, maybe I had too many layers on. Perhaps I'd had too much to drink, but I felt like I was being propositioned.

"Ayuh, you might be right," I grinned through my forgotten downeaster accent at this man who pulled at my gut and bit through my loneliness.

Called to duty as the night heated up, the bartender showed his true colors at work. He really was the quintessential barman, a touch rough around the edges, with a wide welcoming smile that never looked so luscious as when it was turned on me while he served and cleaned and replaced kegs with the ease of Hercules. His biceps stretched then bunched beneath the black t-shirt he wore, his veins sat still, like rivers frozen over and falling in glaciers to the Hudson.

At one point, my fourth drink in, he strode around the back of house to the fireplace, and I swiveled on my stool to keep him in my sights. Telescoping in on his ass as he went to his knees to throw a couple more logs on the fire, I imagined him in that position, with my cock in his mouth. His shirt rose up, and I saw his waist and the dipping of his jeans hinted at the slice of butt hidden within.

A compass puling me to his high seas.

South to my north.

Gregariously, he held the attention of all patrons. Not that I was exactly shy myself, but being the new guy in town put a different spin on things.

While he was deep in talk with a group at the far end of the bar. I took my leave.

Shaking my head to rid myself of the dreamy vision-like man invading my being, I trudged to Dyce Head, wrapped in wanton wondering and excitation that he was here!

I held off as long as I could, kept my log and my journal, tidied, maintained the lighthouse and the keeper's house, took care of all the little troubles of two dwellings in the dead of a snappy Maine winter.

All of my thoughts flew back to the barkeeper.

Three more days was all I was good for.

Course I went back to the Grouse. There weren't very many other options. _Fuck's sake, there were none!_

He remembered my drink of choice, had it waiting at the bar the moment I entered. All I had to do was walk up and sit my ass down. I still fucking sweated it; this thing, which was not a _thing,_ with a man who _I thought_ was into men, specifically me.

Clearly I spent too much fucking time on my own.

While I sipped, he swiped, right beneath my hands. Until I reached out and pushed those working muscles down hard to the wood, flat beneath my own, his knuckles eating into my calloused palm.

Grinning, sucking that fucking bottom lip under his perfect white teeth, he shook with soundless chuckles, but the look in his gold-bright eyes, which met mine like liquid splashing into a seaglass colored tumbler, was dark and sexy and filled with images of us naked, rolling, fucking, plunging and sucking.

I held my breath over the tonic that rollicked on my tongue.

"Strong." Just one word as he turned his palm and stroked long ivory fingers between mine.

I gulped and fought down hiccups, "I've always worked with my hands."

"I have no doubt," the telltale lift of the corner of his mouth told me he was definitely flirting with me.

I was floored.

His own hands were not quite smooth, but still felt like glass within my large clasp.

Linking fingers, aching to cross the wooden boundary that held his form away from me, his hips and ass and chest and back and throat and hair, I gulped furiously and took another drink and pushed my hand to his wrist and then his forearm of steel covered sinew.

Looking to Miss Jane, the minute haloed young woman in the corner, he mentioned, "You have a lot of admirers."

He needed to know what I was about. My chest expanded, "I'm a man's man, if you know what I mean."

He mimicked me perfectly, teasingly, so that my dick bloomed to a hard hot mushrooming head, "Ayuh, I definitely had you pegged."

Throughout the night, he made my libations into a libidinous thing.

Too much thinking, too little talking, cabin fever, and no fucking were not a very good combination for me.

Add in five whiskey sours and closing time, and I leaned forward to his ear, whispering a second away from touching it with my lips, "Come to Dyce Head tomorrow night."

**Dyce Head**

I felt like I'd been at sea for a fucking year I was so wobbly. I glared at my single bed and tried to make it shipshape.

His last words rang in my ears, _"Don't make me anything to eat, I prefer to dine alone."_

The remembered succulent grit of his voice stood me up like a sail. His words made me ponder.

Looking in the misty ten by ten inches of mirror that enclosed the medicine cabinet, I squinted at my face. Wide, still youthful but with laugh and life lines making tracks, I scratched my dark stubble. I'd leave it. I wanted to see razor burn blooming on his chin.

My balls were groomed clean, my pubes tight and short; I'd expect nothing less.

Glowering at my fire engine red tall man's unionsuit, I swore, "_Fuck no._"Not tonight. Shoving it down into the far recesses of my overflowing hamper I opted to go commando instead.

Pulling on a crewneck, I ran deodorant over my pits, sniffed a few times to make sure I was presentable.

Checking my watch, I had another hour until he arrived.

I wanted to fuck him now.

Hyped up and horny, I took the stairs three at a time. Music was inside my head, he was a muse inside my body.

Turned on, nervy, and aroused, I concentrated on the task at hand.

Polishing the Fresnel lens, cleaning the windows and lantern, buffing the surrounding brass banister, I tried not to conjure up what this night would bring.

There was a subtle knock at the door and the creak of the hinges -- _I needed to get out the W-D 40._

Looking down the open porthole of the upward spiraling structure, I called him to me.

Quelled the frantic clipper of my heart.

His approach on the twisting stairs was silent. I watched his every move. The squat square structure of Dyce Head still housed a curved staircase, a timberframe coiled structure that made this lighthouse a trademark property on the National Register of Historic Places. No more than peg and hole held it together in its sturdy sexy curvature.

Leaning against the round metal banister, I observed his stroll over the circumference of my keep.

He converged with me again. Reclining against the window opposite me, with the vastness of the blackened out night ocean at his back, he curled his hands around the galleon-like railing.

Composite, gleaming, proud and wide open, he smiled and shook his head like a master at a school-boy, "There are some things you need to know."

I nodded and took closer, my hands making their discoverer's way into the waistband of his jeans so I felt the tremble and sucking in of his flat-hilled muscles.

Working from one hip to the other, touching the tips of bone and pressing under cloth to dip into the crevasses of gorges, I remained a step away though I wanted nothing more than to shove my clothed cock against his.

Cold, he felt cold; he looked hard. I wanted to warm him up. His skin glassy like the lens of the gigantic lamp behind me, but throwing out vapors of frigidity instead of orange-yellow heat, I asked, "Hot toddy?"

The laugh that left him boomed around us in this hollowed catwalk, "I've _never_ heard it called that before!"

Settling down to a deep dark ragged chuckle with my hands still working further into his pants, he grappled with the nape of my bullish neck and the back of my shoreman's shoulders, "I'm not really of the human race."

Rather than being repulsed, I clutched closer, bruising fabric in my fists, wanting to slash it apart to see the gorgeous dick I knew was beneath! "What are you then?" My eyes lowered from the harsh oil-light of his look, to my hands, to his crotch, to his thighs.

He put on his lecturer's voice, low of timbre, throaty and full, making my cock so fucking hard I nearly burst out of the gray flat front flannel trousers I'd worn just for him.

"I'm a vampire."

There. Straight up. Flat out.

_Jesus!_

My mind blundered, but…_did I really give a fuck?_

I'd believed in sirens, serpents, Medusa, the Bermuda Triangle, and mermaids.

Here was my very own merman.

_They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the LORD, and his wonders are deep. _

He tried to stand away, but I wrapped my muscled arms around his back and gathered him to me. No fucking way he was going to escape me!

"That's why The Grouse and this little dollop of heaven on earth suit me. The sun rarely shines; when it does I'm behind the bar, those leaded glass panes let in very little light…._are you frightened?"_

"Are you going to kill me? Because I'm probably not really that tasty," I lapped his throat, noting the lack of pulse and uninhibited by it.

Shaking his head so that the muss atop ran wilder than usual, he growled like a fucking lion into my ear, "I'm a vegetarian, but don't worry, _I still like my meat._"

My heart crested, my cock started to spill frothy ocean foam.

That was enough!

He may have been immortal, but I was still bigger.

Bending my knees, I wrapped his legs around my waist and washed the panes with his back pressed against them, lapping his neck and tearing at his lips, moaning as I ripped his shirt apart.

Fucking pants, they had to go!

Setting him on his feet, I grappled with buttons, zippers, fashioned my mouth to his long thick dick before it was even free of cloth.

So fucking starving.

I sucked him in and yanked his boots, socks and pants off with one hand. My other was occupied with his balls and that little hot hard tight bridge of skin from his base to his ass.

I wet him, up and down. Lathered with kisses, sank my teeth as much as I could into the meat displayed before me.

"Fuck's sake!" he howled.

His thighs mashed to my cheeks and I bit and kissed and supped the skin there too.

"_MMmmm,_" I hummed a long lingering line of my open lips along his dick, leaning back to watch it unfolding, weeping from the head, thick fluid like yellow sea foam salting down the raised veiny velvety flesh that stood inches from his groin and centimeters from my mouth.

Ingesting the cum as it came out in drabbles, I took all of him in only half noting the crack of glass that was his head meeting the window and fracturing it into fine skeletal threads.

Reaching into my hair, he pulled me up.

My clothes were shorn so quickly I spun like the shutter that threaded us in the pulse-glow of amber light.

"Jesus, _fuck!_ You are so fucking beautiful!" His words seared my brain and made my cock stand right up true and proud to his!

Stern of lip, he held back moans and reaction as our erections touched, reacted, fell back and then ground hard!

I cried out hard, "Oh jesusfuckingchrist!"

Damp and wet and cold and hot and fucking hell we were so turgid our dicks slapped and rasped up and down, our lips ripped flesh, tongues knew no teasing but for pure sucks, breath left.

Plastering me around so my palms were braced against the frame of the racing light of the Fresnel, he spread my ass, handled my balls.

Chrome and brass and blasting and brash!

I widened my stance, grabbed the bolts of the telescoping device.

My cock hung low between my legs and he took that wide shaft as well as my scrotum in one hand, pulsing to mid-mast.

Skin so tight I screamed and ground my forehead to lustrous dome.

Pulling up so much cum I was near to orgasm with those course strokes, he streaked his fingers over the liquid, glazed it to my ass, pumped inside of me until I was open and quaking and waiting, ever widening my legs and pushing my bottom to his touch.

I knew I'd have to polish the light-piece again in the morning, our handprints were all over it.

Goldenrod.

He touched the tip of his erection to my hole, opening the puckered lips, and I turned my head, the illumination had nothing on the robust refraction of his naked skin. So fucking sexy!

He was so well-built…_how could he be anything but supernatural? _ Compact, broad shoulders, slim hips that made the most amazing frame for his cock as it lifted up into me until I stood on my tiptoes, to sink back down onto him, my heels to floor.

Grabbing his neck I kissed him so fucking tight my tongue wanted to make a new home in his mouth, much like his shaft was making a new den inside my ass.

Light revolving, rotating, phosphorescent and sensually breaking through the fog with a groan-horn, sending up stars reflecting on the wall-to-wall windows from his spectacular skin. Revealing what he'd said was true!

_A merman._

Rearing back, I grabbed his ass, flesh that didn't give beneath my powerful clasp.

In my ear, he moaned shakily, "I fucking love your dimples, your arms, _Christ_ that cap you wore to the Grouse!"

I moaned and braced harder into him, my head hung low, my cock ripping up to my stomach, legs shaking, arms stretched and trembling when he reached around with one hand to caress me up and down, up and down.

His other hand stayed my hips. I bit through my lip, arched my back, and all of my muscles tensed when his foraying hand left my dick to dip down to my sac.

"_Oh FUCK!"_

Railings.

Turning.

Twisting.

Voices raining curses!

My eyes slammed shut to the flash glow kerosene of the lantern.

Heat broiled, obscene, my sinews clenched, from cheeks to jaw to throat.

His treasure trail wore a path up the base of my spine.

I fucking wept!

Harder than hell, he sank into me and pulled out, I locked the pout of his mouth to mine though I could hardly breathe.

My nostrils flared.

His shaft was an anchor winching in and out. Faster, chains pulling, winding, reeling.

I grabbed his ass and smashed him into me when I came, biting through saliva, venom, cum, pulses, beating, flashes, "Fuck, fuck, _FUCK_!"

The growls when he came were like the deep muted throb of a marching band, beatings like innumerable Bahamian steel drums entirely filled with howling base need.

Jetting cold spume into my ass, he caged my torso and fisted out the bottom of my spine so I was like a sail at sea with full wind behind me.

Lowering me to the floor, he spun me round and embraced me close.

His gusts were as hard fought as my own.

Gales of breath, cool and warm, warred against my perspiring skin.

The skirmish was over.

I looked balefully at all the steep stairs that held us away from me bed.

Our nipples lifted, the planes of our chests touched, cum stuck between us, and I wanted to taste it all. More than anything, I needed to wrap myself up in him.

The amber flash glow of his oil-lit eyes looked sated. Peaceful. A thumb to my jaw and then my lip made a perfect query.

"Let me take you downstairs." I stated against his shoulder that bore me up.

He smiled sleepily. Linking our fingers, of both our hands, which was pretty fucking foolhardy on these narrow steep steps, I led him to my quarters.

Down below, into the lighthouse's hold, we ducked under wooden beams and lintels to my ascetic bedroom where the ceiling met my head almost. At the foot of the tiny bed, my man stooped low.

I tucked him to me and kissed the satisfied smile on his lips. My chest to his back and my thighs wrapped around and within his, I nestled to slumber with Carlisle. Waking just once, to feel him stroking my back, kneading my worked muscles, shushing me further under the fabric of old quilts and time, "I'll not leave you."

The muffled report of another foghorn across the bay sank through sleep. The bouncing back of flashing light off the pre-dawn gray-rose fluff and blush clouds didn't interrupt my snuggling back down into arms and torso and chest that cooled and curled my overheated body.

Sunlight creased my eyelids, and a different sparkle interrupted my dreams. The din of fishermen taking trawlers to sea upbraided the air. Through the unshuttered window of my bedroom, glare snow riveted and pressed soft diamonds into the skin of a muscled pectoral underneath my cheek. As if the gems laid inside of him…a _lumiere_. Rolling over into arms and legs and chest and ass, welcoming plucking lips and nuzzles of flesh, I cracked open one eye.

Smiled sonorously.

_Thank you, Neptune__**.**_

It hadn't been a dream.

Linking limbs and meshing mouths and musing hair in hands and twisting nipples, tugging cocks, hips winding in and out and against, I rasped tenorously, "Good morning, gorgeous."

He wasn't smooth, he wasn't cold or glassy. Rough jagged, hard, soft; a fucking storm at sea! A hurricane of flavor and fucking, and so real; not a creature or beast or monster. Not at all!

A man.

Sitting just slightly back, I watched the warring cannons of an armada stamp his weary face, "I'm not sure I know how to be."

How well I knew that sentiment. I sat above him, pushed him down, brought my chest to his and spoke clearly, "So you're a loner too."

"Yes."

"But I don't want to be alone anymore, Emmett." And there he was…not flirting, his sexiness and sensuality and need and loneliness bare, apparent, naked, nude and named.

Greedily I kissed him, took his face between my hands so I held him from sharp jaw to flawless forehead, driving my tongue into his mouth and licking his delicious taste and sucking his lips and moaning against his teeth, "Oh fuck, Carlisle, me either."

* * *

~~Who wants a lighthouse keeper or New England bartender for their very own?~~

Uh, I took certain liberties with the lighthouse. But for the rest, I grew up in Maine, and have fond remembrances.

Thank you **Viola**, again and again, but specifically for the scripture**, **Psalm 107:23**.**

Thanks **C-Me-Smile **for the suggestions, and both you and **RedVelvetHeaven** for the pre-post words of love.

Enormous cheers for those of you who have reviewed every o/s. I am really honored.

**This is going out to Ape, Liz and Diane, Vi, Kat, Mer, Margie, Kari, V, Tosh, Amanda, Jenn, and Robin.**


	14. Erosion

**Twilight Twenty-five**

Prompt: 5. Erosion  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: Edward Masen McLeod/Isabelle Swan  
Rating: M (My God, what has Rie pulled out of her Ziploc baggie of tricks now?)

Okay, the fun thing about **Viola Cornuta** is that I'll say, 'I wanna' do this crazy fucking whacked out thing…' And she'll say, 'Okay, what do you need?' And then I bombard her with a gazillion questions, she storms Google like the fucking Bastille, and voila! We're good to go! Amazing.

Disclaimer: Oh you bet your sweet asses I own this permutation of Edward and Isabella. Damn right I do. The rest goes to SM. Thanks for the fun playground.

Heya, **Ape**! This is for you. Because: 1. I think I used my big words. 2. You are extreme. 3. You ARE funny, you make laugh, and I love you as hard as you love me

~~Introducing Scotsward. Tweed, braces (those are suspenders, yo), and World War II~~

* * *

**Erosion**

Circa 1944

Glasgow, Scotland

Edward

I knew I should run.

When I heard her forthright approach, not just the steady click clack of her pointed patent heels on the uneven pavement down Sauchiehall Street but her thoughts. Deliriously deadly ideas that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck and caused me to shiver against more than the frigid mid-January damp cold that bespoke of snow to fall in the night.

I'd just left the Brewery Tap after my two habitual pints of 70 Shillings lager. A day at the docks on the River Clyde made me thirsty.

The previous twelve hours had been a tumult of work between air raids as bombers roared down from Loch Long to the Clydeside shipyard wear I toiled. Blasts shook air into ten thousand shreds of munitions, and one more riverside factory became nothing more than scrap metal.

Running to the fray, I joined the milieu searching for survivors, pulling out more than one charred body; flesh peeling off and smelling like the worst most sweetly putrid burn.

I'd downed my pints and bid goodnight to my coworker Colm. Weary of mind and body. I wanted no more thoughts, nothing to do with the 500lb bombs that rained from the sky, whizzing spiraling grim reapers enormous in the toll of bodies they blasted to bits.

I heard agony, felt the heat of tissue combusting, knew every single torture known from man to man. Because I inhabited the minds of every fucking person in my vicinity.

There was no more I could do. Not tonight. Not ever. As part of the Scotland Home Guard, I would never be sent to The Front because of my disability. My brothers died at field and right next to me, and I was helpless.

_She _thought I was easy prey.

Because my heart tripped over several beats, catching my breath. Times of anxiety made it worse. This heart murmur of mine.

Stagnant, staunch, I wanted more, elsewhere, and different. For all the terrifying deeds flashing through her head, I was rapt and spellbound. She was a mermaid calling me straight out into the most dangerous waters. I didn't hasten my steps, but made my steady way towards my flat on Great Western Road. Equally horrified and exultant that she followed.

She wanted me. Would endeavor to kill me.

I was called to inaction. A hot thrill wrenched through me.

Entering the gloomy hills of Kelvingrove Park, a new thick mist cottoned me in dreariness. Monotony of war-brought-home and daily nothings replaced by adventure at hand.

I stopped, cocooned in the moon's frail rays and the vapors of winter. Leaning against a cold monument, ice frosted stone met my tweed jacket, sticking me in place. I would never be mobilized.

_Click-clack._ Sure of foot even on those slim plinths, she never veered nor swayed on the sleety cobbles. The night was black as hell. Darkness swept down at four in the afternoon and never loosened its blanketing hold until well nigh mid-morning.

She looked back, as if in fear. A ruse.

Gasping for breath and holding one hand to her chest, she met me with false fear widening the luminous purgatorial red wick of her eyes, "Sir, I think someone's following me!"

I should have run. I knew what she was about. A young lass, no more than seventeen to my thirty-six, her body blossomed with near-womanhood, and she was both beguiling and breathtaking. Her full lips were stained dark red in the night, a beacon that called to me. Craving, I bent closer, disregarding the choking peril that speed my heart through several faltering beats. A woolen coat belted in her tiny waist, the fur trimmed collar brushed her pointed chin. A small cleft there spoke of strength. For all her supposed youth and daintiness like a glass figurine, I had no doubt that she could murder me.

I was a waxwork.

My life was already wasted with no hope of joining my brethren upon the arenas of war, I stood paralyzed. Called to different action.

I felt, finally, a reaction.

Finding that my voice was Saturn smooth and star-worn, she felt it caressing her ear, "A young lass such as yourself shouldn't be about alone at this time of night." I smiled patronizingly and my nostrils flared with the warm freezing floral saturation of her preservedflesh.

A disarming ingénue, she looked me up and down. Shivered with awareness, "I was at the wards, tending to the casualties from today's bombing. I didn't realize how late it had gotten."

Without an accent, her vernacular was timeless as her features, her next words a siren's call, "Would you be so kind as to chaperone me home?"

Long blinks and a slight shy smile shaded her lovely lips into dips and curves that wound my growing erection tight. "Little girl, it would behoove you not to approach strange men in the dead of night." Words, wrapped in my polite Scots tones, husbanded my secrets and hers.

Though I called her a girl, she was old as time. I read it in her eyes that flashed and narrowed and then opened again. An ancient. Not of this earth. She laughed, suddenly whimsical, slightly vexed by my disobedience, "Lass? I am two hundred years old and bred of granite, ashes, dust, death. _You_ are a boy to me. _A lad._"

Her closeness was staggering. All thoughts of fleeing bled away like the spill of soldier's guts on the stage of the battlefield I'd never see. I towered over her with proper infantryman's bearing. She no longer thought I was weak. Stepping closer, she observed my strong jaw clenched hard under her perusal, my green forest eyes, my hair like a quid coin tarnished as a one pence piece. Over my shoulders that bore up girders of steel and slammed wood to iron, strapping muscles that built the ships of war the Germans destroyed every day. To my lean hips, dirty fingernails resting on my thighs.

Her thoughts sublimed my own, plumbing fathomless depths: _La Tua Cantante. I must have him. I should have killed him minutes ago! The burn is unbearable. He seems to know, why is he not frightened? Oh GOD! I want him! I want him. His blood, his body. Inside his mind and atop his skin and over his body and throughout his flesh…feed. Feel. I'm so hungry!_

I stumbled back.

She smiled in awareness.

_Does she know?_

Holding my arm out, I said goodbye to this life.

She folded a light hand deeply to the crook of my elbow.

Under her directions, we made Byres Road and a terraced house. Some of the bricks had loosened from mortar from the never-ending blitzes.

Inside, she was different. The dim glow of low lights inflamed her skin to deep-seated jewels. She shook her hair out, placed her hands on her hips and silently dared me to ask.

With hard fought consummate ease, I denied her the pleasure. Two steps in front of her, I turned her immortal world inside out, leaning down to whisper against the small ear displayed by a sensual marcel wave , "I can read your mind, love."

Realization hit like a cannon to her gut, and she fell back against the wall!

"Why are you still here?"

I walked closer. Her breaths made frosty panes across my throat and the top of my chest bared by the open collar of my shirt. I shrugged, smiled, "You want me."

Her hands flew to her hair and curled into the perfect style, mussing it to a brown glazed nest, "I can't."

"I can't want you."

"Yet I'm thirsty. _So thirsty_."

She shook her head in denial, but her body moved in acceptance toward mine.

"My pet," her fingers were shards of hot ice against my chin and over my lips that opened easily, with need. "I need a drink."

Gloomy.

Doomed.

I fed from her love-lust-murderous intent.

She stalked the room, to me. Away from me.

_Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack._

Longing for blood, eager for my body, angry with this turn of events, she charged the air with every indescribable savage manifestation that was her true calling.

Athena on the warpath, Aphrodite beckoned by fleshly wants. Temptress, goddess. Killer, creature.

She hardly spoke, but I ingested her words as she wanted to imbibe my blood. _Singing blood_, she called it.

Her eyes coal-black, extinguished, broiling with midnight famine.

Flurry furious thoughts swam over me:

_Saint, sinner._

_Can't touch._

_Trust me._

_Fear me._

_I know._

_Wait._

She left me. The rampage of her bloody appetite could not be denied. It was either me or someone else.

She chose a stranger over strangling me in my own sanguine flow.

I remained. A willing prisoner. Her the gaoler.

She knew.

I waited.

Making my way about the abode, I found her bedroom on the top floor. It was lavishly decorated with velvets and reds, accents of cream. Rich, a den of hedonism, every surface soft, plush. As if this boudoir held hints of her, which her mind did not allow me to see.

She hungered for softness against her skin. Luxury, decadence missing from our ragtime era. The clothes hanging in her wardrobe were well-made and well-kempt. Minute stitches showed the care with which she repaired each item. Fingering the cloth, I imagined her naked upon the wide bed, a Medieval construction housed in dark polished wood. It was as high as my torso and shuttered by sliding wooden doors carved with designs equally religious and carnal.

Foraging about her washstand, I found a sliver of imported soap whose fragrance reminded me of her. I washed quickly in the basin of cold water while she was out. Tearing down my suspenders and unbuttoning my shirt, I splashed and shivered. My armpits and neck. My chest and stomach. My trousers opened, and I lifted my cock out to bathe it as well as my scrotum.

Drying with the faded towel upon the spindle, I left my shirt undone, my pants slightly open and pulled my braces back to my shoulders. Combing my damp fingers through my hair, I scrubbed my teeth with a finger and scratched the stubble on my jaw.

I settled to the carpet. I waited.

I lit the gas fire and huddled close.

Restless, I found a beaker of malt whisker and drank two tumblers-full. I should have left. Immobilized by change, enlivened by intensity of emotion I'd never experienced, I remained. I stayed and made myself ready for her.

She'd be back. She could no more keep away from me than I could escape her, even now, left to my own devices.

In any manner she wanted, she could have me.

Her red nails could carve my face into a Guy Faukes effigy. But I wanted to feel them scraping my nipples. Her legs had been clad in stockings that weren't one bit real. Just a seam drawn up the back of legs, by her own hand, as most women did these days. Her mind fascinated me, not one bit mundane! Wearing a slim skirt that tightened to her thighs and topped her knees, her long legs were supreme. Her entire body ethereal; hard, white, shining. Like fine brittle Limoges china. Her hair had hung in a long smooth curtain of dark brown, behind one shoulder, and pulled over the other in four perfect crests with not a tress out of place. The little peaked hat, small brim shadowing her forehead atop her head, sat jauntily as the grin on her lips. A tinge of crimson lipstick flattered her unnatural coloring. Lashes so long she easily did without the rare cosmetics to be found at the chemists.

The yes, the no. She could have killed me. Easily. She wanted to, more than anything! Until she saw me, heard me, became curious about me. Pulled to me by more than just my blood. Another lust. Perhaps…_love_?

I'd never know the call of bullets whistling in my ears. Would never stand shoulder to shoulder with the First Canadian Army on Belgium's Scheldt Estuary.

This was my own _Operation Vitality_. _Operation Infatuate_.

I'd never see the rivers Roer or Meuse.

But she had become, in less than an hour, my muse.

She was an island I wanted to conquer. Inhabit.

The cost of my own life was worth it.

Now I understood the telltale bugle of love, lust, desire, need, greed!

The door swept open, sending an arctic blast like a backdraft up the narrow stairs.

She was flawless. In spite of the grotesque imagery of her latest meal. A lone man in a dark alley with rats racing willy nilly while she sharpened her incisors like knife to whetstone on his jugular.

Not a drop spilled, not an ounce wasted.

Her blouse wasn't even wrinkled.

But her eyes were blazing new fire.

Storming to me, she immediately shrank back, as if remembering her manners, humanity, civility.

She lifted my empty glass and refilled it. Set it beside me while I watched. And yearned for her touch. Even if it killed me.

At the side of the roasting fire, she looked to me, "You didn't leave."

I drank the whiskey, the flame it corroded down my esophagus I fancied to be like the scabby wound the smell of my blood made inside her throat. Darker now, wanton, my voice scraped like rust, "I couldn't."

The raw animalistic gloriousness of her murdering sat like a devious stepsister aside the woman who waltzed to me with her hand offered, palm down, fingers lax, a queen for my kiss, "I'm Isabelle Swan. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

I stood slowly, the toll of the day shuffling through my muscles. Inside my large hand, hers was swallowed. Cold to the heat of alcohol and flush of lust that raced over me, I brought her dangling fingertips to my mouth with an open kiss and lapping tongue on her knuckles, "Edward Masen McCleod."

The petal of her hand opened and turned, as if to the sun of my lips, and I mouthed the hills of her palms while she took her other hand to my neck, my hair, grabbing tight and growling, "You cleaned yourself up. Made yourself at home. Do you not doubt that I will kill you?"

I opened the pearl at her wrist and rolled back the tight sleeve of her blouse, following it with my lips to her elbow, "I don't care, Isabella."

She gasped and held harder.

I was at her neck, more shell-like buttons undone. Blouson opening to her young ripe breasts.

All her thoughts banged into me as I suckled.

_Weakness._

I felt it in her knees shaking, her calves trembling and twining about my own.

_To fall in love with a human man is an Achilles' heel._

I planted my bare feet to the floor and brought her between my legs, pulling her skirt up as far as her round hips would allow.

Internal rages and rampages made her shake her head in denial, clutch my shoulders in acceptance.

_So ashamed. I'm a monster._

"You're beautiful, Isabella! Stunning," I made words licking her lips and pressing my tongue into her mouth. "An angel."

_Angel of Death._

Passionate fury, erosion, implosion of fleshly wants!

I ran my hand down the swell of her ass and ripped the skirt in two from the back of her thighs to her waist.

She clawed my suspenders down and tore off my shirt, roaming the coldest hands over my muscles, my nipples sitting straight up and brown-red, goosebumps of heat and fire followed her touch, her face in my neck, "I was saving that skirt."

I laughed because it was just so damn ridiculous!

_I'm impure. Evil. Wicked. How can he laugh?_

I couldn't help but love her. My soul, my _heart_, was in her hands!

She saved me.

Yearned to kill me.

Angel, devil.

She wanted to let me do what I wanted to.

_Leave, stay, live die._

"_Are you ready?"_

"_Taste me."_

"_Waste me."_

I'll die anyway, readily.

She stepped away and disrobed carefully.

_So this was love._

And death.

Undoing the jet rows from her fitted wool jacket.

Beneath she was resplendent in a silk camisole and pants that sat like short bloomers, opening over her lily thighs. Peach cream upon ivory flesh. Her nipples grew swollen pink beneath the flimsy shift. She took care with the garments she'd kept in pristine condition due to the shortage of every indulgent item. Luxurious flesh with each limb unveiled, Isabella held to my lowering, darkening eyes.

_Impure. I am wrong._

_This is wrong._

"This is right, Isabella," I held her to me, the satin sinking in fluid caresses that tickled my sensitive skin.

I want to fuck her.

Inside of her, I could die.

My trousers met the floor with a _swish-sway_.

_I want his blood, it's too close!_

To make matters worse, I blushed when her fingers stole like feathery quills up the sides of my cock that was bare and turgid and aching wet!

_Red fresh cheeks, even his nipples pound to me. _

_How can I stop this?_

"Don't stop." I grabbed her hard, wound that glossy mane of hair through my fingers and over my wide wrists, pulling her lips to mine with a groan, "_Don't stop! Oh please, don't."_

I pushed my thigh between her legs and loved the wet suck of satin at her pussy.

_Good._

_Bad._

_Befriend._

_Take care._

_Guard me?_

_Protect you._

_KILL ME!_

Angry, hissing heaving and hating-loving, we tangled around each other and the slip lingerie parted like waves to the prow of my callused hands.

Bare skin, so cold it hurt and numbed and then melted and softened.

I had her. I had all of her at once, and it was overwhelmingly erotic. The slap of flesh moist with my perspiration, the images inside her head of us writhing together, her mute words, my cock nestling in between her legs, running up and down her cunt, sliding along the slit, I licked, sucked her tits until the peaks were bright pink, and her mounds were glistening and her mons against my erection solidly engorged and asking.

And denying.

_I can't have you._

_I can't stay._

_I can't leave._

_Can't let go._

Beastly things thoroughly ached through Isabella's head.

Her heart was still to my tripping organ.

Her body against mine pulsed a lifeline through us both! I smacked back the timber panels of her bed and laid her down. Placed below me, she slithered with poisonous love, a sea serpent. A sorceress.

I wet every bared inch of skin with my mouth. Sucking her hips, holding her still by her waist, I licked the clamp at the underside of her tits, sinking face first into the clefts. One side and then the other. Mouthing and nipping, nibbling, I ascended the rounds to eat her nipples, pulling them right up into my cheeks.

She pulled her legs high so her thighs were at my ears, but the pound of her thoughts never stopped.

I felt every loving tendency she'd never known.

I alone made Isabella lose two centuries of learned control.

_Fuck you._

_Love you._

_Kill you._

_Keep you._

I pushed her legs apart and sat up straight on my knees. My cock arched and lifted and bent down to her like a divining rod. My eyes of ivy turned to moss when I felt the moist nest opening beneath me.

The fire made devilish shadows in the bed chamber. The roar of my body above Isabella's looked like a demon stealing an innocent. She opened, wide. Sat up to her elbows, threw her head back and howled when I entered her.

My hot to her cold.

The killing wish metamorphosed to sexual fury, unfurling and combining so deeply! Abrupt lust, love, sensuality, blood, taste, flesh, fuck.

Her mind crumbled.

Her desires silted, and there seemed no way for them to meet, melt, come together.

The taut arc of her naked back was such that not even a Renaissance master could paint it justice.

I wanted to be hers eternally.

I wanted to say no.

I'd never run away.

It was too late.

We were bound. She was my love, my lover.

Our kisses were climes of gales and hurricanes and driving sheets of freezing mid-winter rain; of her hunger propelled us apart then straight wet and hard and hot and sucking so fucking deep into one another!

I laid low onto her, her tits topping torso and scraping. Isabella's hands would never be scrubbed clean, but the manner in which they grabbed my shoulders and the hard hilled muscled of my back, the way those greedy fingers sat into the cleft of my ass while her palms flattened to the dimples above felt heavenly pure!

Thrusting into blasting cold depths that hardened and ridged over my cock, I yanked Isabella's ankles behind my hips. Smearing the pencil-drawn line of silk stockings up the backs of her legs until she groaned and begged for more. Locking her legs to my waist. I cupped her tits with my free hand, pluck, pluck, plucking her berry nipples.

My hips fell into her, and out. Long hard slow sure strokes.

She sank her nails to my upper arms. Opened flesh wounds on my chest. Licked at the trickles of scratched blood.

Her thoughts were all over the place.

_Love you want you need you must drink want to sink my cunt onto your cock._

_Lick bite suck dick and fuck._

_Eat. _

_Love._

_Change you, keep you, protect you and tear you apart as surely as you are turning my innards inside-out._

_I would never hurt you; I want to own your soul. Rip your flesh, fuck your skin._

Blood and semen and cum and saliva and venom. All the fluids of our two bodies combined.

She hated herself.

She was beautiful, amazing and smart, sassy and gorgeous, stunning, arrogant and egotistical. Rightly narcissistic.

I was but a mortal

No choice.

_Push pull pain hurt fulfillment._

_Take me, make me, ache me, rock me, fuck me, own me, make me yours._

_I hate myself._

_I love you, Edward._

_I want to crawl inside you and live in your veins._

_So thirsty._

_Your call kills me._

I watched her, fighting. Filling her appetite as I plunged in and out of her; delicately ripping apart necks. Centuries of her kills stoked my furious lust to a steaming hot vengeance. My driving motion shaking out those murderous recollections, a much more gratifying _mort_.

Stained.

Lips.

She hated me for the way I made her feel, questioning the simple savage desire to drink of my blood. _A monster_. Tainting the primal urge that she fed upon with a craving for my body. Perhaps even my heart, not to puncture and drain but to coddle, contain, cradle. _A lover_.

The overriding rapid fire of her thoughts subsumed mine.

Her ankles shook in my grasp.

Her breasts quavered up and down and her moans made piecemeal of my sanity.

The eiderdown slid to the far side and hilled like a dune against the enclosed ramparts of her bed.

The palisades of Isabella's soaking slippery nether lips goaded me on.

She had meant to kill me.

Instead she kept me.

_Surrender._

_Always._

_Have me._

_Always._

_Own me._

_Make me._

_Yours._

I reined her to me, sitting back, my body arched and my arms caged her against me. I needed her, needed her so tight against me. Her tummy to mine, her breasts to my chest, her hair so sensual billowing and blowing with each of our gusty breaths,.

_Grim._

_Grin._

_Inside._

_Outside._

_Suck._

_Fuck._

"I'll never…_be_. I'll never be…perfect, Edward," Bella gyrated down onto me and came with the tight lips and sucked in cheeks and a single bellow-thrust that made beetroot-purple of my cock!

No holds barred, I grappled with her waist, straightened my legs beneath her, and lunged up. Stilling in a dead curvature inside of her, nothing moving but for my trembling thighs and my cock that spilled out.

_But her love is enough._

Isabella braced back on one arm and lifted up and down my cock while I sat, a sword impaled, a warrior brought home, a bayonet being sheathed.

Her exhalations were loud against the enclosed echoing chamber, she throbbed. I pushed into her. Feeling every inch of my cock inside of her. Our beats stood still and stole time. Leaking the silt of blasted sand through the hips and swells of an hourglass.

_Yes._

_Now._

_No._

_Never._

_Always._

_Have me._

_Our bond. _

_Unbreakable._

Never to be tamed. A wild animal, a wanton woman.

She killed me.

Isabella broke, and I repaired.

We kissed into oblivion.

She would move earth for me. I just wanted to move inside of her. Again.

The next time, scant hours later, the gas fire still heating, our bodies coiled; crawling, lifting and fucking, I jolted and respired!

My heart -- tired through anxiety, the gaseous fumes of bombs dropped daily, the ware of loved ones lost, friends killed at war, the hard drab toil of this life --gave way …_at last. _

The heart murmur ended me

The last thing I heard, inside and out, was Isabella wailing, screaming, "_Noooo_!"

And then the shredding of my neck, not neat, not as I'd seen, Isabella too distraught to care. Life fleeing out, immortality flooding in.

_The birth of love_

_The end of death_

_

* * *

  
_

~~So, I wrote this in a night. Yes? No (stern face). Maybe? You want to move to Scotland? New favorite prompt yet?~~

I think it goes without saying, but I fucking love you all.

_**~~ll~~**_

Okay, serious moment, have you heard about **Twilight Fandom Gives Back****: www(DOT)alexslemonade(DOT)org/stands/19842**

"_Did you know that every year over 200,000 children worldwide are diagnosed with a form of childhood cancer? We cannot ignore this shocking statistic impacting the youth of the world, and we certainly hope that you won't either. We need your help._

Starting Nov. 15 through Nov. 20th, the fandom will have the opportunity to help in the fight against childhood cancer. We haven't set a monetary goal, because we're firm in the belief that no matter what we set, you as a fandom will surpass it."

This is dear to my heart as I worked quite closely with children with cancer and their families prior to starting my own family.

**So, I am auctioning myself off:**

I will write a minimum 4000 word piece of ONE of the following: an original one-shot of your choosing with any pairing (Slash you ask? Why the hell not!), a Dead Confederates outtake (obviously no fucking between Rebelward and ReBella as they ain't done the deed yet in the story), the continuation of one of my Men of Twilight Prompts (not including Mirror, Crave, or anything Pedanticward related) OR an Incarcerated outtake.

**www(DOT)thefandomgivesback(DOT)com/**

Direct links, etc. are on my profile.


	15. Worship

**The Twilight Twenty-five**

Prompt: 25. Worship

Pen name: goldenmeadow

Pairing: Carlisle/Esme

Rating: M (Mmmm, the parents? Oh yes.)

**Viola Cornuta** is super-sexy beta-heaven!

Disclaimer: What now? Yeah, alright already. This is the backstory that SM didn't have time to write? All I own is a malfunctioning iPod (my third in three months…see _Dead Confederates_). But these characters are much more fun to play with than a fucked up iTunes telling me to piss off.

~~Remember _Plea _and _Crave_? Bringing it on back to canon, sort of…oh, and there's one more of these to come~~

* * *

**Worship**

Circa 1921

Milwaukee, WI

Carlisle

More than a sire, I wanted to be Edward's father.

Sitting upon his sick-dampened cot in my ward just moments before I did his mother's bidding, the waxy wild face that twisted mournfully reappeared to me as the young man I'd interrupted not two weeks earlier in the private box during Swan Lake. Then, he had held vitality inside of his body; it swam with a pink fruity flush to his cheeks, a spark of dance tamping down his warm weary mossy eyes.

At the infirmary, a near corpse, the influenza had made a putrid mess of his organs, the physicality leaked from him one second at a time. That last moment of his life turning to death, becoming immortality with his blood a hot course, a current rushing into my mouth, I saw through time and corporeality into the escape of his mind. Trespassing his visions, I had watched the blaze white woman with him.

_Isabella Swan._

I didn't know who she was. But the breath of her name on his final exhalation was a deliverance.

Crying screaming harrowing and bellowing, Edward's outbursts found me floundering! _What had I done? So very selfish! _

Ampoule upon syringe of morphine, which I stole from the glass cabinet, made not one bit of difference. Moving Edward in the dead of that night to my house, his suffering brought back the way I had wanted to rip my hands from my body, the growling stringent cries of his were mine almost two hundred and eighty years ago while I pummeled my face, my chest, trying to beat the demon fire of making a monster out of me!

All I could do was keen with him, remembering the gore. Restrain his arms and legs so all that moved was his torso, youthful and bared, bending upright into an arch that lunged up and up and up!

As if locked into a grand mal seizure, Edward remained in that posture, wailing for three long days. Over hours, his skin stopped perspiring. His features caught in the moment. The rigor mortis of a vampire in the making.

His voice, the tone formerly deep and melodious, became short and rusky through unending shouts and bouts of tearing groans.

Bloodthirsty.

Not the boy I had seen.

It took six months for Edward to become less a savage incensed beast wanting to puncture the delicate delicacies of every human he smelled.

He was alternately suspicious, spiteful, famished, forlorn.

I never knew a smile to unfold his grim mouth.

I rarely heard words.

His mother's evocative admonition that I should talk more, that Edward would need that of me, made churning rotgut of my coal-like viscera. I knew not where to begin as I observed with deadened psychethe suffering I alone had wrought upon this young man.

And then, _Isabella Swan_.

I broke through his forced seclusion, his remote trance, impelling him to hunt with me.

Feline, fast, utterly lion-like, Edward outpaced me! He had grown into his skill as a predator, supped with gentility. Tenderly stroking his kill before glading his teeth to thunderous veins.

Replete. Never satisfied.

Always, this was our bond.

As if the warm blood trickling through him was a skeleton key turning his soul, Edward spoke, speedily, and I imbibed every word as if I'd been locked down in solitary confinement for thirty decades, which was very nearly the truth.

Recounting his imaginings to me, Edward talked of Isabella Swan. Dream-sprite, myth-woman, she had inhabited his sleep. In the dead of night she'd rescued him to the light of day, a liberator to his captive lonely existence, a boy who understood the remoteness of human nature even inside the loving embrace of his family and few friends.

I'd stolen his ability to dream. And thus had torn his heroine from his clutch.

The first two years were terrifying…_what had I done?_ Vestiges of doubt and staunch Christian guilt seized me, made a sieve of everything I'd formerly believed. Edward doubted his essence, his transendence. He awakened to become sedated and worried he would never know the woman whose love, unreal as it was, had nourished his near-manhood.

I vowed never to turn another.

The epitome of beauty, giving, fortitude, he ultimately forgave me. _How could Edward doubt the existence of his soul? _And the one little gem we both grasped was Isabella Swan. The future of her.

Equally of artistic and empirical mind, Edward divised a novel way to survive the mindless toil of days that never slept. He painted and drew, reams of thick paper and stacks of canvases. All of her.

Turning to the piano, he played the same song over and over, one that his mother had particularly enjoyed; Chopin's _Nocturne._

_Night._

I'd hoped his coming to me would be daylit.

I had been naïve.

Like a son following his father's footsteps, he studied my own workings and turned to medicine. Stating it shored him up against the hunger for civilian blood, Edward kept as busy as myself. Hands at task, we never idled. But for Sunday afternoons. A bit nontraditional in our weekend best, stalking dinner together and then returning home to a lit fire on the open hearth, music on the gramophone and newspapers and opened books and sheets of music littering the parlor floor.

A near restful peace enveloped us. I was honored by Edward's growing respect and admiration, replacing his hurt and mute rebuke.

_Dawn._

We moved to Wisconsin. On the outskirts of Milwaukee.

Even together, as father and son, we were still lonely.

Him to his piano, painting and studies. Me to my research, vampire lore, and patients.

Platitudes.

Solitude.

I passed a young lady often on my walk to the hospital. A blissful smile curled her lips, fresh blossoms of an autumn bloom in her heart-shaped face. She cradled her pregnant belly with both hands, holding it up, circling her palms over the full nascent round.

She wore no ring.

She always greeted me with a trill laugh warbling her voice and a nod, "Good morning, Doctor."

"How do, Miss."

As the nights grew darker, I followed at a pace, unnoticed, from the school at which she taught to her house. Only to safeguard her. From fantastical gargoyles such as myself.

The mere presence of Edward, one of my own, was enough to ease the solid void, the diaphanous unnamed ache in my cavernous chest.

His companionship made my long, long life less stultifying. Still there was no wife, no mother, no creature comforts, and I'd never had a lover.

One morning, the pale blue sky crisp and clear and bright as her eyes, I came upon the woman seated on a bench. Gasping, she rubbed her fingers to her womb and laughed at my rushed inquiry, "Ma'am, are you alright?"

"Yes, Doctor. The wee one gets a bit active on such lovely days. Her little foot is pressing out just a bit too hard, and I had to sit down for a moment." Her voice shone like her glowing visage, beautifully rapturously of the heavens.

A mother's love.

"May I?" My hand quivered and a bronze-red leaf, like Edward's fall hair, flattened to the pavement at my feet close to where I knelt.

She grabbed my wrist unceremoniously and pulled it to her tum that was tight as a drum over a living little being inside. A sharp point lunged out into my palm, and I laughed at the feel! She caught her breath, then my other hand, placing it higher and to her right, just beneath the full globes of her beasts where the dome of a heel kicked out!

"Oh!" I exclaimed, I'd never felt anything like this.

"I know, she's a wild little being!" The plush apples of her cheeks glossed with love so brilliantly I wanted to weep.

"She?"

"A mother knows these things," and her smile folded into itself, a secret maternal turn of mouth.

Ten days passed. I still felt the beat of a new being housed in her mother's womb shifting into my palm.

I thought of little else.

I didn't see the mother-to-be again in all that time.

In my study, contemplating the fragile gift of humanity, worrying about the pregnant woman, Edward interrupted me. Looking harried, wrapped tight inside of thoughts that had spun from me to him and beyond, he demanded, "You must go to the hospital now, Carlisle!"

Unquestioningly I grabbed my black leather bag, left off my coat and ran through back grounds to my calling.

I understood he couldn't, at times, stop himself from peering into my mind.

Edward knew something.

Inside the casualty room so highly lit I blinked and wheeled about, I saw the gurney.

She was near-dead. Her spine fragmented into a million irreparable pieces, like shattered glass jigsawing into the surrounding tissues.

It was her, the schoolmistress.

No longer was there a garden of ripe flowers inhabiting her flesh.

No longer was there a fertile hill copiously filling her belly.

Her womb was empty. Recently. The flesh of her stomach loose and squishy.

Her face was cold and blue and dying.

Running to the files, swerving away from lingering nurses and gabbing doctors, I grabbed her file. Esme Snider. The surname of good Midwestern German stock.

A birth certificate. A bairn. The girl she'd promised was born not a week before. Two days after I'd sat with her on the bench.

Anna Elise Snider.

Slipping through the tissue thin papers, the final sheet flittered to the floor, a breeze wafted it a few feet away from me. Even from this distance I knew what it was.

A death certificate.

_Morning._

Mourning.

I fell to my knees.

She'd tossed herself off Ashland Cliff.

I knew her now. Not as a woman about to know motherhood, but as an adolescent girl in Ohio. 1911. Ten years ago. Her parents had brought her to my surgery when she was sixteen, having fallen from her tree-top cottage and landing with a broken leg.

A tomboy, the broken bone had jutted out, but she bit her lip against the pain. Shock dilated her eyes, but a proud grin lifted her mouth, "The boys will never make fun of me again!" She pointed her index finger to her chest, "I've got the first broken bone on my lane!"

Nonchalance and flirtation knew her not. Innocent and courageous, chaste and untouched, and just a girl was what she'd been.

How could I have forgotten that episode?

_I'd promised never to take another._

I beat the tiled floor, scrubbed my palms into the grout, rasped my nails to the cracks.

With her heart still beating, _only just_, I signed Esme's death note, wheeled her to the morgue, lifted her as tenderly as possible while her broken back disjointed with the crunch of over-glazed ceramic about my arms.

Through the night, to my house, to Edward, I ran softly, pouncing brittle cold dirt, shouldering aside the branches of pines, taking to the woods.

He had known; he'd sent me for a reason.

Skilled as a medical student himself, Edward had readied my library.

I tried to make it better for Esme.

The second time round was just as appalling as the first.

No one had strength enough to beat back the flames corroding marrow to carbon.

_No one._

Coming to, eyes fiery and irate, skin crawling never to know the cradling suckling of an infant, Esme was a wild Fury!

Heating water so it felt like witches' torches to my fingers, I filled the bath and wrestled Esme into it. She was rigid and near crazed and half catatonic. Stilling her, wrapping her in heated liquid and lavender fragrances, I managed to settle her enough to wash her of blood, death, rebirth, afterbirth. Her honeyed gilded hair a simple bob to her shoulders turned to dark bullion under the water, and she choked gasps of air as if she thought I would drown her.

Against my eyes of amber, the livid red of hers finally registered.

Acceptance and recollection.

She spluttered out and crawled back when she heard her new tonality, "You!" She clawed at the slick edges of the tub to sit up, and the speed of her movements silenced all but the slosh of water to the floor for just half a moment. "You? Doctor?"

I nodded and begged her to be…_unharmed._

"No, no no no! I knew you before!" Her wet slick naked body now perched on the ledge, and her hands grappled with the window seeking escape.

I cooled her heat and anger with a stroke over her cheek, a virtuous slide down her arms to lift her fingers away from the tongue and groove of metal hasp that held the casement tightly closed.

"Yes. Esme. When you were sixteen," I clasped her hand and beseeched her silently to understand what I was, how I had resurrected her, and that I had known her in my bones for a decade.

Disarmed by her nudity, I looked aside and attended. Flight or tolerance.

She complied and allowed me to finish her cleansing.

Little more could I accomplish that night.

And not for many more.

After her first bath only a fortnight of sickening bewilderment needled like flames throughout our house.

She came to much more readily than Edward. Perhaps it was her more matured age. Perhaps it was the merciless search for any death to end her life.

We made a small monument to Anna Elise. I could never give her a child; I thought I should feel like Esme's father. Yet I'd known that skin-enveloped touch of her baby and felt it to have been the kick of my own rights and rites of passages that I wanted to bestow upon her, but I was either unable to, or I disallowed myself crossing the scant boundary that held us apart.

There was one thing. For both of them. A son in Edward to Esme. And a mother unto him.

For myself, I held apart.

They doted upon each other, dociled the battles that engorged them…to kill and to love.

I rankled and festered and feared I would never know a mate. Her presence made my lack of connubial caresses ever more pronounced.

Edward began to compose.

Esme wondered about teaching again.

I counseled myself against desire for that I should not want.

_Midday._

A semblance of peace sank over us, soft like cloth.

And excitation. Because weeks to months found Esme regarding me like the woman she'd wanted to be…seasoned and burgeoning. Coquettish, even flirtatious.

But how was this thing suitable?

She was older than I by human standards. A fact my burrowing mind found amusing. It was an existential conundrum

The swish of her hips, the shine of her eyes, the startling femininity I had done so long without. Her breast so high and round, every curve hard and soft and willing me closer.

I bit my lips and frowned and foraged deeper to work and reading and counseling my young ones.

My imprudent thoughts worried me, debased me through their ungodliness. Esme would be my daughter! I'd saved her, sired her, made her one of my own. A tetragrammaton, her name was too sacred to be spoken, too precious to be defiled, all I should do was worship from afar.

But she looked at me with such hunger, quietly bold on those evenings when Edward was out.

Her skirt lifted just a bit as she sat with legs coiled upon the sofa. Kicking off her heels, sifting her calves together so I could hear the rasp of silk hosiery.

One button undone at her neck and a hand lifting out the liquidity of her champagne strands.

Oftentimes I excused myself to bed or my library. Though I rarely read and sleep was almost three centuries forgotten.

Over my desire and her singing call, there was the knowledge of her husband. Charles Evenson. The man who had wasted the honorific heart of human Esme! The coward who'd abused her, had hurt her, had plied her with a brutal mockery of intimacy.

Every night, for five more months, Esme watched me keenly.

I didn't know what to do!

There was no way she and I could be a simple tryst.

It would be more than that.

My hands shook with greed at the thought.

The beginning of her second year with us, Esme came to me. Her silky robe was a dash of flowers linking close, but only just, at her waist.

The hills of breasts stood out, and one leg reached through the satin drapes.

Sternly, ignoring the motley crew of my hormones that had me sitting upright and closer to my desk lest she cotton on to my growing erection, I asked, "Yes, Esme?"

"Bathe me, like you used to, Carlisle," she breathily requested. Pivoting away, she tapped down the long hall to the bathroom, and I heard the jets of water filling the luxurious tub she'd had installed.

Standing, my knees knocked into an open drawer, and I swore. Esme giggled from two rooms over at my subtle expletive.

I knocked on the door and only opened it to her call, "Yes, Carlisle. I'm adequately covered."

Entering the mist of heat and pillows of warmth that evaporated the air, I looked to the floor. Shucking off my loafers and socks, I tucked my toes into the hook of the thick bath mat.

Sitting to the side of the tub, I remembered how I had washed and rinsed her locks. How I'd run a washcloth over her plush curves, wanting to ease the hissing insanity I'd cursed her with.

Now she beckoned me.

I used to look at her as no more than a savior.

Now I wanted to savor the wet slope of her body beneath water.

Then I'd dried her, wrapped her up, rubbed drip-drops from her hair and brushed it.

All these fraught frightening alone years, a chaste man.

I sank my hands through the foam of bubbles and felt her hips.

My first sensual contact in centuries that had sat like a glacier over my being.

No lower, no higher, I simply thrilled to the touch of her bare skin, as a lover, inside my palms.

"What do you want, Esme? If you could have anything, what would it be?" I hated to ask, quite simply understanding, with the pain of newborn death upon me again, she would answer with something I could not give. For her humanity I'd taken away.

Turning just right and lowering so my fingers found purchase over her watery breasts and sat to her engorged drowned nipples, Esme's low voice was faint but sure, "I want this family, Carlisle. I want only what I have. And one thing more."

"_More?_" I gasped and pulled her peaks up between my thumb and palm.

Against my mouth, into the nook at the side, she licked, "I want you to look at me as a man does a woman."

I kissed her with every torturous friendless fiendish year, one hand still gripping and twisting her warmed pale dusky peak and the other inside her hair, over her head, "I could never see you as anything but a woman, Esme."

Stealing away but holding my hands in place, Esme taunted, flirted, cajoled, "Good. Then there's just _one thing more_ I want, Carlisle."

I held my breath and waited. She sat up out of the water upon her knees so I was faced with her fabulously beautiful blushing breasts. I pushed them together until her nipples joined and grinned to her sigh-sway-gasp, "I want you, to join me in this bath."

I smattered smiles into her cleavage and stood.

Releasing my pants, opening and dropping my shirt to the floor, I lifted myself into the tub, unsettling water with my large frame.

"Like this?" I asked while I leaned back and pulled Esme to my lap.

This came far more easily than I'd thought.

"Yes!" He head craned away, her back reached out like a billowing sail at sea. Her thighs upon mine were feathery. Her soft reaches sank to me, and I was inside of her.

I smiled and sucked a nipple to my lips.

I groaned and lifted my hips so my cock sank like a mast, timber to the waves of her secret hold.

Her arms rested on the rim of the tub, Esme's hair dangled in the water she was so far bent back over me, I jerked her hips harder than I'd ever imagined. The slap of wavelets were nothing to the feisty fire of our fucking.

Upright, I brought her to my chest and melted when her hands ran all over me, and down to our joining. Curling her fingers, she circled my shaft that lifted in and out, clinching as tight as her insides!

I moved just once more, to raise her legs up my torso, her ankles at my ears. The bath was emptying all over the floor and we laughed, moaned, _groaned_.

Her round arse sat upon my thighs and rained like peaches over my sac.

Inside of Esme, I'd never felt heat, tight, sucking, hard-soft love like this.

_Never._

She bit her lip, and I tugged it out of her teeth.

She bit my finger. and I howled and wanted more.

She kissed my mouth and sucked my tongue and trounced my cock.

A fist in her hair, a grip on her hip.

A dip, lunge, swirl.

Holding tight, fighting breath!

We were done.

Undone.

Collapsing.

Unfolding.

The water cooled to the ice of our love making.

I did as I always had. _Always would._

At the vanity, I folded Esme in towels. Ran my fingers first through her hair, and then the silver backed brush.

This time though, I picked her up, her legs wound round my bare lean waist. And I carried her to my bed.

_Evensong._

I had mine.

_Finally._

How long would Edward have to wait?

* * *

~~Well? Carlisle unto Esme…_worship._ Yes?~~

Thanks all you lovies!

An interesting turn of events to come in a couple of days, _Crusade_, and please do forgive my upcoming flurry of postings. These must be finished by December 1st.

Rie~


	16. ASSthetic

The Twilight Twenty-five

Prompt: 01. Aesthetic

Pen name: goldenmeadow

Pairing: Edward/Bella

Rating: M

So to me betas. I'm a lucky gal, for I have two I fucking adore! My writing would be half as much without them. My gratitude to **V (Vanessarae – she edits my full stories and writes the winning **_**Seventeen Cakes**_**) and Viola Cornuta,** who has been my blissful helpmeet in this insanity!

Disclaimer: Come on. Didacticward is ours. The Twilight stuff is SM's.

~~All hail the return of our favorite _Cog au Vain. _Yeah, we (The Royal We: me, Vi, and Pedanticward) like to call this thing _ASSthetic~~_

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**Aesthetic**

Circa 2006

Forks, Washington

Edward

There was no need to break out the poultry, nor even my _ruffled grouse_, that night, as Bella was knackered from our cullenary lesson and full to bursting with my five plus streams of _lush, creamy cum_…oh no…wait. _Damn._ I was still a bit nonplussed by her Orange Julius vis-à-vis Edward's jizz comparison. Determined not to let it stand, I sought to guide her through osmosis as she shuffled deeper into a lightly snoring, slightly drooling slumber, "Bella, love, you simply need to lick and dribble instead of gulping during the money shot. _I promise you, it will be tasty rather than overwhelming._"

She hiccoughed and wound her fragile flouncy body closer to mine.

Thoroughly pleased now with the day's events, I looked forward to my next challenge.

Two rounds of rosette-like flesh conquered: her moiré vagina and her softly shredding chenille mouth. _One to go._

All I had managed to get into Bella that evening, besides my cock two more times, was a few bites of Baked Alaska. That thought alone made a cold dome of my shaft…_mmmm, the Denalis. ._ _Tanya. Tanya and Bella and me! A __**troisieme**__ of texture and tantalizing aroma!_

The following day found me excited when Bella announced, over a breakfast of sunny-side-up eggs, she wanted to go shopping. Planning our excursion, I imagined squiring her to the more exclusive boutiques on high street, Port Angeles. Certainly a stop at the _La Silhouette_ lingerie specialists was in order. Running both my hands through my penny strands, I strangled my scalp over images of Bella in her loose, gray-through-over-wash granny panties.

I tried like hell to ignore Bella's pointing, shouting and bouncing up and down when she alerted me to a turn-off five miles out of Port Angeles proper.

_Oh fuck me._

I knew what this was.

And this was _not_ a fashionable, little shop catering to Black Am-Ex card carriers such as myself.

_This_ was _one-stop-shopping._

I shivered in distaste.

Bella laughed and asked me, unnecessarily, if I was cold.

Unable to deny her anything, I parked my shiny silver Volvo in the acres of concrete outside the enormous sprawl of Target, the city's latest eyesore.

Sulking, pouting, pinching the bridge of my nose and throwing in a few sighs, I accompanied my love to the automatic doors. _Automatic doors?_ Was it really so difficult to use your own strength to push a door open?

_Ugh._

"So, Edward, I thought we could look at some clothes for you while we're here?"

Firstly, I did not wear prêt-a-porte, _dear Alice forfend_, and secondly, I spluttered in disbelief, eyeing Bella up and down, "What about you?" My voice rose and even cracked with distaste and shock!

Bella stood tall, still only reaching the middle of my torso in her beaten up Converse, "I hate to tell you, but this is what all the _kids_ are wearing nowadays, Edward."

I didn't know what to think!

She'd looked perfectly acceptable, downright delectable in fact, at the meadow. Ladylike and sensual in her little wispy skirt and blouse. But now she had on ratty jeans, a t-shirt, and that bane of twenty-first century existence, _I shuddered_, a hoodie!

Looking around at the peasant-like throng, I noted I did stand out a bit like a sore thumb. _And God knew my thumb, not to mention my entire hand, was chafed after all the jerking off it did while my human Bella slept so peacefully. _Dream-addled Bella sleep talking had interrupted my masturbating the other night, "No, Edward, NO!" I'd anticipated the rest of her declaration to be forthcoming, _"Don't leave me."_ But it wasn't. _How odd._

Twisting the screw, she continued in a new sassy tone, "You kinda' dress like an old man?"

Mutely, I glared at Bella.

Until she groused, "Oh right. You _are_ really old, aren't you?"

I rewarded her with a half-tilt of a smile and a crook of my head.

She softened the blow with a sweet full kiss and took me in hand to the Men's Apparel section. Again I quivered with revulsion that I'd darkened the doorstep of a store with an actual open-plan set up. From a huge pile of shirts, Bella lifted one and held it against my chest, "Turtleneck, Edward?"

The thing was dark chocolate brown, not a bad choice per se, but I could smell the synthetic fibers and the fumes made me entirely too nauseous. Queasiness shuffled aside when I noticed Bella was not actually looking at the top but at my crotch, now lengthening to a nice rigid _extra large_ size with her perusal.

_Oh my!_ Bella was referring to my Cavalier!

I grinned my wicked insouciant half-crooked-smile, "You like my turtleneck, Bella-love?"

"Well, I don't really know any different, darling. But I must say that a cowl neck is much more interesting, than…say, a _button down_" I had to bite my lip until it was mangled nearly to shantung at her utterance.

Needless to say, Bella's carnalogy was _inspiring_. My eyes were dark as jet and hooded as I smirked _and_ dazzled, _highly_ aroused, "Actually, _love,_ if we're going to discuss my Cav, I'd prefer terms a bit less off-the-rack such as _baldequin_ or _passementerie._"

Beguiled by this turn of events, and the fact my festooned cock was gaining pleasurable attention from Bella, I let her ply me with manufactured clothing items and shove me towards the closet-like dress-rooms.

Only to pout with aversion anew at the squalor of the partitioned-off surroundings.

_Was this a joke?_ There wasn't even a gilded, velvet _confidante_ in the waiting area for Bella to swoon upon when I exited the changing room. And that in itself was a disgusting nasty prank. The plyboard rows of dressing rooms, harshly lit, were a shambles of plastic hangers, straight pins sticking into the stained floor, and shorn off tags. Brooks Brothers this wasn't. And more's the pity.

Not breathing, touching the manmade threads with my fingertips only, I dressed hastily in a pair of jeans and a crewneck – Bella had gotten quite the laugh about that penis pun – and modeled the less-than fabulous fashions for her.

Circling me, she pinched my ass, rubbed my shoulders, caressed my thighs in the too-dark indigo. _Well, hell! At least she wasn't fainting!_

Forget her slim wrist, my shuttle cock was as wide as my own strapping sinew!My dick made new residence in the economical material, and leapt with a big fat drop of toxin spilling out when she slapped my rear, and licked up my neck, "Sold!"

Coy, flirty, a courtesan! She was teasing and testing me, forthright and arousing the hell out of me. In the middle of a warehouse-style obnoxiously bright store that catered to the plebs of the Northwest Territories, no less.

Putting my goods into the red monster of a shopping cart – _Fuck me! Who bought clothes at a place that catered to every facet of human need? And why did I need a trolley? _– I determined it was Bella's turn.

To get her out of those thin-threaded warped high-waisted panties.

Linking her arm through mine, I whistled as we headed towards the lingerie division. And swore again that she'd convinced me to visit this hellish place. With all the bright red and the screaming devil children racing about, this was far fucking worse than my formerly tame idea of Purgatory!

Touching shorts and bikinis and brassieres and stockings, I continually had to pull Bella away from the more verdant colors. All I had to do was steer her clear of everything chartreuse, and we'd be golden.

Not handmade, not labored over, but for the small fingers of foreign children pressed into factory work, not 100% silk or lace, these underthings didn't fit the bill at all, but Bella's cheeks were flushed, and I dare say she rather got off on shopping for nightwear with me!

I tossed a few ensembles into the basket and enjoyed the way the subdued satin-blends silted across my own more masculine clothes.

At the Lady's Dressing Room, Bella thought to fob me off.

There was no way in Hell that was going to happen.

Like a lapdog, I gathered her bits and pieces and followed her into the cubicle.

The scant space had us pleasurably smushed together.

Unzipping her odious sweatshirt, lifted her t-shirt, I unfastened and lowered her jeans.

I tore the sports bra from her body and replaced it caringly with something, though a bit scratchy and not of Parisian make, more sexy. The demi-cups lifted her breasts jauntily, the sheer material hinting to the buttons of her tits that tightened with my fingers pressing.

_Yes, that would do nicely._

I pinched her nipples to make sure the bud color blended well with the translucent cloth, and Bella moaned breathily, "_Edward_…you're getting a bit handsy here."

I ignored her outburst and continued to tweak, roll, pluck. Testing the textile against her pebbling nubbins…_in the name of quality assurance, of course._

The one time I needed Bella to remain still and silent, and perhaps even to close her vixen-like eyes, she was up on her tippy toes, whimpering loudly, beating her palm against the shaky wall, and writhing all over me!

I'd be damned if I was going to fuck her in this mecca to the mongrels of civilization, no matter how much she was pooling in her panties so the aroma sank inside my nose, causing a ripple like chenille to spread across my groin and stop atop my growing cock.

There would be absolutely no fucking in Target. Ever.

Perhaps La Perla, but Target? _No_.

Adequately delighted with Bella's reaction and the look of the new bras upon her perky tits, I piled her clothes over mine in the gargantuan tomato red trolley and hastened to the brightly lit Beauty banner.

Bella definitely knew her way around the flourescent lit aisles – thankfully the artificially blinding rays didn't spark the reflection right out of my skin.

I was as overwhelmed by the red lanes heaped with cheap goods imported from China as her tush when she bent over to inspect clearance tags and money-off coupons.

Already thinking ahead, I wondered if I could just slip it in. An accident…_dear Bella-love, I don't know how my cock came to be in your ass, but doesn't it feel nice?_

I couldn't get my mind out of the gutter, and I blamed it on the spendthrift human fodder surrounding us. More appropriately, I couldn't get my head out of Bella's rearend, she kept fucking bending over in her search for the perfect lubricant!

Much as I abhorred this place, the crowds of meat puppets and buffet-style shopping, Target did have a vast array of personal soluble liquid for his and her pleasure.

Bella stood up, bouncing against my groin, grinding her bum there for a moment before I toppled her forward with my hands placed to the metal shelves in front of her.

She giggled and examined another price tag, trying to ignore my preposterous erection, "I don't know, Edward, this stuff's expensive!'

Running my nose up and down her neck, saturating myself in her cantante scent, I lifted a slim bottle of Elegance and dictated, "It doesn't matter, love. And it would help with your vaginal dryness problem."

So quietly I wasn't certain I'd heard her correctly, Bella whispered, "_Perhaps if you put your mouth where your money was, there wouldn't BE a problem!"_

_What the fuck?_

Was I not good in bed?

Oh, I had research to do, STAT.

She chose warming Firefly Feminine Organics. With one eyebrow raised I wondered at her purchase.

"I think I'll like the heated aspect, Edward. I mean, your furbelow dick gives me a bit of frostbite, you know? You seriously take my _core_ temperature down when we're fucking?"

_Huh, I hadn't thought of that. _"So, warming lube would help with the hypothermia?"

Bella nodded.

And I settled on plain old Gun Oil.

I was fairly sure something akin to Ben Gay or Binaca wouldn't feel all that great inside her already hot ass!

Thankfully it was two-for-the-price-of-one day on pseudo petroleum jelly, so Bella couldn't really complain.

With an entire shopping cart full, _smote me now_, we finally made our way back to Forks, and I sped to my studies while Bella showered and, _I hoped,_ groomed.

Her comment about my cold cock, and her unhappy reaction when I'd inadvertently stuck just the very tip of my dick into her ass while looking for the entrance to her long canal of love, made me realize preparation and tutelage were needed for this endeavor.

She pretty much lit a fire under my ass!

By the time I'd closed out Google, Bella was clean, freshly scrubbed, and I couldn't wait to see what she'd done with her _satouche_ down below.

She was settled on my enormous king sized bed, laying on her stomach and teasing me with her rump hinted at beneath the tails of one of my own _old man_ button downs. Undeniably the shirt didn't look frumpy on her.

Propped up, biting into a Golden Delicious, reading from _Pride and Prejudice_, Bella was so thoroughly engrossed in the mind numbing meanderings of boorish Mr. Darcy she didn't notice me pulling off my top and padding to the bed on silent feet.

I jumped up to land at her side with my hand just beneath the twin rolls of her bottom.

"Fuck-a-nutter!" Bella exclaimed.

Her heart sped, her cheeks flushed, the reactions of her body pushing her pillowy ass closer to my wanton hand, and I damned my misguided hearing again. _Fluffernutter? I could certainly do with a fluffer!_

"I'm sorry, Bella, I didn't bring a sandwich. But I could make you one if you'd like," I did _not_ want her damnable human appetite for the inanity of food to interfere with our night's lesson.

"No, Edward, you just surprised me. I've got my handy dandy nutritious apple," She opened her mouth wide, possibly as wide as when she'd deepthroated me and sank her pearly whites into the crisp crunchy flesh so juice dribbled down her chin in trails of cloudy liquid, so very reminiscent of my cum.

_Hmmm, Carlisle had assured me that my venom-sperm really didn't cover any of the five food groups, but it could still provide a filling meal. And, mmm, a sarny; Leah, Bella, me, doggy-style; the image never lost its appeal!_

I shifted my cock in my pants and left Bella to finish her apple, smirking at the hidden symbolism.

At the stereo, I pressed play and listened to the melodic strains of our song weaving across the room.

Closing my eyes, I breathed deeply of…plain air? Untinted by even the hint of Bella's wet arousal? Pulling in another chestful, I sampled the oxygen with my tastebuds. _How curious, I couldn't smell Bella's sweet secretions At All._

My attention was roused by what sounded like cursed mumbling, "Fucking _Clair de Lune."_

I must have misheard her, "What, love?"

Bella's eyes widened like a doe's in the sites of a rifle, "What a lovely New Moon?"

Of course, my Bella had stood and was looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows of my bedroom, admiring the waxy round orb that hung like a nocturnal pendant strung on twinkling stars in the sky, dangling the apple core in her tiny fingers. Treading up behind her, I admired Bella's rear. _Yeah, her full moon, that's what I was talking about! _

_Shit, I might need _to rub one off_ before I got started with my master plan to conquer her luscious bottom._

Looking over her shoulder, suspicion narrowing her eyes, Bella questioned smartly, "Excuse me?"

_Fuck, I'd said that aloud!_

"Uh, I said, 'Perhaps some Rachmaninoff, and I could rub your feet while you sit on the ottoman?"

Strolling to my CD collection, Bella fingered the cases with a gentle sweep of digits. _"Maybe you could just can it with the music and suck my pussy, Edward?"_

Now I knew I was hearing things, my cock twitched, my palm itched, my ears burned and my mouth filled with venom as I rasped, "Come again?"

"_Yeah that would be nice for a change."_

She cleared her throat, "Anything's better than Debussy, darling," Bella smiled at me with such purity I wondered if I was losing my ability to hear every human word no matter how quietly spoken.

And when she looked at me like that, licking her lips and biting the plumper bottom one until it was red as a ruby all I could think was of those _petits oreillers de lit_ sucking my cock.

Bella's eyes flew straight to the fly of my pants as she queried, "What did you say, Edward?"

_Dammit, I'd done it again!_

"We could try a little Bach?"

Meeting in the middle of the room, I pulled Bella back into my arms, my hands settling to her waist.

Groaning against her petite perfect ear, sinking an open-mouthed kiss to the hidden pressure point right behind the scallop of her lobe, I muttered, _this time beneath my breath_, "Jesus, Bella, I want to cum so deep in your ass."

Apparently her hearing was much better than I'd thought all this time even with the minute nature of her ears as she tugged my palms to her derriere and whisper-moaned, "Edward, did you say something about my ass?"

Suddenly the air was awash with fragrant silky threads of Bella's arousal!

Cupping the bolsters of her rear, I licked a line from her collar bone to her jaw, which was quite a stretch even for my paranormal tongue situated as I was at her back, "Uh…no? I said 'For a real change, we could always listen to Orlande de Lassus'."

Really the only sound I wanted to hear was her sweet symphony of moans and whimpers, sighs and groans; a cacophony of eroticism to lock away in the 8-track of my mind so I could later cross-reference sounds with the actions that inspired them

"Skip the music?"

"Yeah," _Fuck yeah! Inner fist bump and let's get it on already, Bella!_

With laziness belying my intent, I unbuttoned Bella's shirt and spread it wide with my fingertips skimming across her breasts. As it fell to the floor, I swept it aside with my bare foot and ran a hand down to her panties, expecting to find worn-out cotton and a rubbery elastic.

Instead I encountered satin, tied in a bow just above her pubic bone! Leaning over her shoulder, I gazed in adoration at the panties then looked up to her reflection in the windows. Pale pink sheer fabric showed not one single shadow of a _galloon_ covering her pussy! The only thing beribboned and festooned were her new bikinis that sat low on her hips with two more large fuchsia bows!

"Oh, Bella!" My nostrils flared and again I reaped the rewards of her telltale aroma staining the air. Enjoying the slip of the sateen material edging her panties, I ran my fingers luxuriously back and forth, feasting my hungry eyes on the slow drip of moisture gathering at the juncture of her thighs, turning the pink a shade darker.

Earlier I'd been disappointed when Bella had returned from her sole hour long sojourn into Port Angeles, while I wandered about aimlessly, beseeching the gods for her to find a good salon at which to get waxed. Instead, she'd met me at the Volvo with an armload of books and what I assumed to be a vulva still covered in a forest of pubes.

Bella, bare lips, and lingerie?

Now, I was decidedly _not_ disappointed. I nodded my head in approval, inside my mouth gaping and possibly drooling, while I executed a happy jig that replaced the usual fist pump!

Unable to contain myself, I slipped the knot from her bikinis on either side and watched the sliverish see-through apparel float down, freeing her velvety skin to my perusal. And peruse I did, with both my eyes and my talented troubadour's fingers.

Her legs opened, her feet planted exactly a shoulder's width apart, and I sank two digits into her thankfully damp folds! So excited I forgot to dull my vampire actions and was rioting furiously on Bella's brightening clit until she shook and shouted and started to dry up as though through drought, "Edward!" She screeched. "Ease up already! It's not an eraser."

"_Be nice to my pussy."_

Chagrined, I sighed and slowed my movements, "Sorry, love…and, _what?_"

"Mmmm, maybe a little Giacomo Puccini?"

"Oh, Bella, I'm too busy to mess with the music," I soldered my fingertips more gently to her softest brocatelle, "But I could hum, if you'd prefer?"

"_I think you'd be surprised to know what I prefer."_

"Come again, sweet?" I pleasured her throat with my mouth.

"No worries, Edward, don't be deterred."

Back on course, I fully concentrated on the task under my hand. Over Bella's naked lower _bouche_, I opened the instruments of my middle and index fingers, gliding up and down the outside of her Labia Majora. Pinching twice with the length of my digits, I felt more wetness seeping out.

Pulling a finger away, I utilized just one. Tenderly traipsing up and down her chamois slit, sliding across but never delving in.

_She was fucking soaking!_

Remembering her chastisement, I temperately brushed across either nipple as well as her clitoris in counter point directions while Bella shook against me, sighing and moaning and filling in the silent void.

Bringing her face to mine, I kissed her deeply and said, "I can't wait to facefuck your mons."

Bella broke away, "Sorry?"

"I was just thinking that I'd like to introduce you to the music of Rainaut de Pons, darling," I smirked and sank to my knees.

Pulling on her hips, forcing her thighs further apart, I compelled Bella to brace herself on the window and bend forward.

A banquet of ripe flesh, and her buttocks, greeted my face!

I supped for such a long time Bella almost fainted to the floor, but I didn't have to remind her to keep breathing.

I sucked her smooth satin outer lips into my mouth for many long kisses then pointed my cool tongue in and out of her while I caressed and divided her cheeks, massaging the crease and then her piquet opening to gauge her response.

This time I was not one bit thwarted!

Bella tossed her hair back, and it kind of whipped me in the face. I remained undaunted and unfazed as I carried on licking, nipping, French kissing and mouth fucking her while bringing my thumbs closer and closer to her piquant fleshly opening!

"You're getting to be quite the cunnilinguist, Edward."

I took an inordinate amount of pride in her praise; licking her up and down twice more,I sat back a moment, "Well, love, I _do_ know quite a few _tongues_. Shall we add the Language of Love to the list?"

Bella grumbled something akin to, _"God! Why do I even bother? Just get back to it already."_ But I was too far deep in her draped heaven to heed her properly.

A few more nips, a couple greedy tucks, a quick pluck of the seersucker _cloque_ of her rear, and Bella jolted up, then back, then forward, crying out and fogging the enormous window pane, "OH! _Yes, yes YES!"_

Thank fuck for once I didn't have to demand her to shout during her release, though she hadn't said my name.

I frowned, a bit.

And my brow puckered like the crushed-crepe flesh around her secret button hole when she speedily brought my dripping able fingers into her mouth, moaning at the taste of herself there.

Again, I asked silently, did my cum not taste as scrumptious?

Replete, but thankfully spurred on, Bella turned and brought my almost bursting tasseled erection from my jeans, those thick heavily dyed denims purchased from Target.

With each shove of the stiff fabric down my legs, she lowered herself to the floor so my cock was long, round, thick, wide and hard squarely in front of her face.

She dallied a bit, bit her bottom lip. Laved her lips openly all over my shaft and curled her fingers into the warp and weft of my pleasure trail, pulling the tendrils sharply until I gasped and my knees buckled.

Wet with her saliva, my dick knew the fast hold of her fists, flailing around, punching up and pulling down. Teasingly, Bella ignored the pelmet of my head until I stopped her hands and showed her exactly what I needed.

Up, up up my length I took all four of our hands then circled the tip with a smart tap that made me gasp aloud, "You see, Bella-love, it's all in the wrist action. Flick it like you're hanging sheets on the washline."

Squeezing so tightly at the base of my cock that it turned deep violet, Bella glared, "That analogy is just so wrong, Edward." I feared she would start whinging, wringing her fey wee hands, so I apologized with haste, "Sorry, darling. I just know you like…_doing laundry!_" The last uttered on an inhalation as she ticked my top just the way I liked, still holding hard to my base!

_Oh FUCK! She was onto something there!_ _Why hadn't I thought of that?_

My cheeks caved in, my eyes threatened to roll but I wouldn't have that now, would I? I bit my top lip, then my bottom, watching Bella's mystifying ministrations in the window, "God! Those fingers, Bella! You should really take up piano." _Or the mouth organ._

_Or my organ in your mouth._

"Edward, do you want a handjob or would you rather give me a music lesson?"

Very good question.

I stilled Bella's hands, the teeny talented things, as I pondered. _Why not both? That would be hot!_ Realizing she was glowering up at me while I condescended, I put her back in motion with a sure thrust up through her circling grasp, remembering to slowly lick my lips and make my eyes heavy and hypnotic.

Turning the tables, Bella crawled between my legs to my undignified yelp!

She still held my cock, pointing it down, and the new direction found me floundering for equilibrium. At my _Bombe Surprise_, she took my ass and spread my frozen glutes with one very able hand, all the while jerking the jerkin of my cock, and leaned in to tongue my folded hole!

She continued to fist and returned to nibble, and once she loosened her grip, the flood of toxin stormed up my dick, and I came in what had to be at least six huge spurts of sperm-poison. I was heartened to see that Bella neither gagged nor spluttered, but ingested my offering with little sips.

I recovered quickly, of course, and carried Bella, _a la modele nuptiale,_to the mattress. A thumb to her clit, a finger swirling her denuded nether lips, and I mumbled, "You're so not ready for me."

Bella of the weird superhuman perception replied chirpily, "I know, right? Thank God we bought that lube!"

Gleefully she crawled to the nightstand and popped open her bottle of Firefly, drizzled some onto my fingers, and let me get straight to work.

In record time, Bella was fully housing my shaft. Situating herself with her back to me and her ass splayed, her knees to the bed, her back arched, she opted for the Reverse Cowboy, and _holy shit_, that was HOT!

_At least we'd gotten past her near-impenetrable hymen._

Through gasps and groans Bella managed, "What?"

I hissed, watching her sweet fucking bum riding my cock, "_Jesus_, Bella, next time let's listen to Haydn!"

Bella wound up and down as I clenched her hips, her waist, her neck. Suckled her back and revered her rear as I watched my dick, slick, WET, working in and out of her. The visual was fucking overwhelming, and I wanted to be inside that last taut recess!

_The only downside was I couldn't see her tits._

"Ohhhhh, _Edward_, did you say something?"

I crowed and grated and gnashed my teeth, "Ung, _fuck, GAH, _Bella! Another option…would be…_Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf!_"

Unable to deny the invitation, I licked my thumb and smoothed it unobtrusively, _or so I thought_, into Bella's brazen backside.

She jolted and jumped off of me!

Wrenched me to my side and pushed me to my front where the hills of the duvet were not quite as soft and plush as her rump or tits.

Straddling my hips, Bella's bare bits moistened my thighs, and then her mouth was on my spine. Her tongue trailed a straight sensual line down my back to my cold crossed-buns and even further!

As if by rote, my eyebrow rose! As did my tundra-like ass.

Looking back, I watched Bella's satisfied, superior smile before she bent low to nuzzle my backside.

I crawled back down the bed, an utterly inferior creature.

_What's good for the goose is good for the gander._

The detail she gave my bottom made me scrunch all of my rock-hard muscles against the need to cave in and cum.

Was this an invitation? Another saddle for my Cavalier to mount?

_Christ, I wanted to bareback, piggyback Bella all the way to the winner's ring!_

"Bella! Fuck-Bella! I want_ your_ ass!"

She nibbled her lips and brushed her fingertips across the swollen ellipses, then rubbed her own ass, sitting back on her knees, "I though you'd never ask."

This was no subterfuge or fake-out, at least I hoped!

My inner demon was a fucking whirling dervish, spinning up tornados like the Tasmanian Devil!

Ready to spill my seed like an unseasoned steed, I sat up and away, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Backup! You _want_ to try this?" I felt like a mere mortal unable to grasp the concept of Bella imagining anal sex.

"Well, Angela said-"

"What?"

Holy shit! Angela? _It always was the quiet ones_. Bella and Ange, ménage-a-trois, me Bella and Ange…

"Yeah, so with the numbing properties of your-"

I interrupted with my imposing vocabulary, "_Lambrequin?_"

Huffing, rolling her eyes, the smeared satin scent of her arousal evaporating, "Edward, I don't even know what that means…."

"Just think of _it_ as a hoodie, my love."

"Ooookay. I'd like to try this, and I've done my homework."

_Hells yes! I was so proud!_

I smiled and began to place her impeccably at the side of the mattress, palms down, hips up, feet on the ottoman that finally came in handy. It was all about the correct angle multiplied by the proper rate of propulsion, because Bella had neglected to buy strappy heels in black, or red –_or Hell, any damn hue so long as they weren't green_ – but I'd remedy that next time.

Grabbing the plain lubricant, I dolloped it onto my hands.

Urging one finger into her, and then another, I scissored the ridged flesh apart and speculated aloud, "Bella, have you been stretching yourself?"

The opening speculum of my dividing thrusts gained gyrations and giblets of drizzled words, " _Ahhh,_ _a_ bit, yes. You can't just spring this on a woman…_Jesusfuckyes_…you know?" _Holy hell, she'd even done the prep work!_

Taking myself in hand, striating wet liquid up and down the hook-and-eye of my dick, I brought myself to her rear and slowly entered.

Each inch made quick work of my impending climax. Every centimeter of my huge beast found me stopping along the way to allow Bella's body to adjust, to let her ass relax to my epic Vitruvian Man standards.

"Shit, the core, _The Core!" _Bella shouted, implored.

I held my weight off of her and scrounged around beneath to palpate her Labia Minora as well as her g-spot but met her bold spitting cuss, "No, Edward. That fucking apple core is impaling my tits!"

_Shit, I'd forgotten about that!_

Reaching beneath, I fished the pulpy, juicy stem from her cleavage and threw it to the windows, where the baleful moon blinked at the fissure it created in the glazed glass.

Another long measured thrust, and I was in.

I didn't have the energy to fist pump or jig because I was too concentrated on not cumming the second my balls slapped Bella's snappish clit!

Motionless, I reared back and howled! I inclined and brushed through the snarled tangles of her nutty hair as it sweated into the dimples above her ass. The ass my cock was sitting inside of.

Bella's forehead met the mattress and pounded twice. Her hips swirled once, unsure, and then again, more confidently, and I took that as my sign to move.

With her tea-time earlier at my testicles and the tight clamp of her taut hole, I was woeful I wouldn't last long.

So hot, wet -- _not too hot, not too wet as I'd chosen just the right lube in just the right amount –_ Bella's bum snookered me in and winded me out!

Before long we had a good rhythm going. She groaned, I sawed, I sighed, she lunged back!

The tightening of my balls and the compression from my abs to my pecs to my biceps to my neck over my shoulders and down my back let me know I was far too fucking close for comfort to cumming all inside Bella's sumptuous rearend.

"Touch yourself, baby," I babbled, under breath, pulling her to my chest and winding her hair into my hands.

Bella's palms remained plastered to the duvet.

_Oh Fuck Me. _If she wasn't going to touch herself I sure as hell was going to!

I needed her to cum with me!

Reaching around, pounding like a jackhammer, I fondled her pearly button and grinned when her arse jutted up to my pelvis.

_She had to orgasm first._

I scrunched my face up in an effort to stave off the inevitable.

_By God, Bella was going to climax first if I gave myself an aneurysm trying!_

My master plan was not to be denied. "Please, Bella, _please!_ Cum with me!"

"Jesus, Edward, I'm trying! But.._fuckmeharder_…just give me a minute."

A minute?

My fists to the bed beside her strafing head, my dick sinking in, sucking out, I added two fingers to her creases to the mix.

_I was a goddamn genius!_

Bella stopped. Shuddered. Reared up! _Ceased breathing_. A pound to her clavicle restarted her respiration with an almighty bellow, "EDWARD! I'm CUMMING! Are YOU?"

I smacked her bottom, grabbed it hard, knifed into it and spasmed like a schoolboy.

Probably seven extended gushes of gilded gruel glowed inside of her tush.

She milked my cock, and I milled her depths.

Bella flattened to the bed, and I beaded my fingertips over her.

Pulling out, with the suck of a vacuum, I fell forward and folded her to me.

Although I knew it wasn't possible, I was utterly exhausted, sated. Replete and contented, having vanquished all three of Bella's blissful openings.

A little smirk lifted the corner of her mouth and my dormant didactic heart flipped. I uttered the words before I knew what I was saying, "I fucking love you, Bella. Will you marry me?"

"_Just because I like it rough?"_

"Pardon me, Bella?" my simper faltered, just a bit.

Bella sat up, wrapping the ludicrously oversized golden duvet and Egyptian cotton sheets under her arms, "Well, you decide, Edward. Either I said, 'That's a bit off the cuff' or 'Are you really asking me to marry you in the buff?'"

I chose the latter and dressed swiftly in those dread despicable cut-rate threads, hoping to entice the right answer out of her, so I could reward myself with an A+++ for the day on a job well done.

I lit candles, turned the lights low, and found my mother's ring.

I placed Bella, costly linens and all, on my black leather sofa and knelt beside her.

"Bella-love, you've made all my dreams," – _and fetishes_ – "come true. Without you I'd be alone, in the dark, wandering about, pointlessly , with no one to listen to me…a blighted spirit, a broken burning man…"

My soliloquy went on for several minutes, possibly more, as Bella's eyelids grew heavy, and her breathing labored deeply in what I hoped was a sign of elation at my loving proposition.

Her eyes lifted suddenly, pupils dilated, when I grabbed her hand, "Bella, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?" MINE, MINE, MINE!

Her head nodded forward and I took that as concurrence, but I needed vocalization of her promise.

"I'm sorry, love, could you enunciate for me?"

"_Christ almighty, Edward. Will you let me finally sleep if I elucidate?"_

That was certainly a mistake of my aural senses. I simply raised one expressive eyebrow and formed a question mark with my lips.

"Yes, Edward, my darling. The answer is yes, I _will_ marry you."

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~~So, did Assthetic make you laugh? Who wants Didacticward's take on the honeymoon?~~

I probably whine too much and don't thank enough. If you've reviewed each chapter, all I can say is WOW. If you're a DW gal, you fucking own me. **Yes, each and every one of you. **

There's a very good chance I'm going to start slacking on review replies, ladies. I really want to get back to each of you because I am completely thrilled with the response to my o/s's, but I'm beginning to freak out a bit . I have seven more to write!

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	17. Crusade

The Twilight Twenty-five

Prompt: 04. Crusade

Pen name: goldenmeadow

Pairing: The Brothers Grimm

Rating: T

~This was my very first prompt idea. It's mostly for my own greedy self, but I have to nod to Kari, **Rowanmoon of Broken Doll**, for her inspiration re. the Volturi. Also, I forgot to thank one **readerkitty** for her comments a long time ago as per Pedanticward. She mentioned Bella with a book and an apple and something so fucking funny that I had to add it to ASSthetic. Y'all know the passage I'm referring to. Ta, bb~

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**Crusade**

Circa 1000 BC and then some.

Italy

Aro

We were not created. Not turned or ruined. We were born as vampires. With the queen of the Seraphim my mother, her sisters the bearers of Marcus and Caius, and Lucifer our father, we three were near-gods, near-devils. _Burning ones_, the beings who had given birth to us were _drakones_, standing nearest the throne of God. And our sire, the fallen angel, the light bearer, the Morning Star.

Didyme, the child of my mother and _Zeboul_, was my half sister.

Chanting Trisagion -- _kadosh, kadosh, kadosh – _we were the mutations of devil and angel.

An unholy union beget us four. The spawn of demons and seraphs. From nascence, the duality of our nature was a slim taut unraveling wire. To protect, to murder. To guide, to destroy.

To use our gifts for good or evil? With a touch, I read every meandering thought ever fashioned in my prey's life or in my lieges existence. In tune with the workings of the heart, the one thing we would never possess, Marcus understood the cloud-like formations, the zephyr and zenith of relationships. Caius was but a lesser brother. Perhaps even a mistake. He held no immortal ability; yet he was the sturdy quiet strong lynchpin that held us together as we walked the earth, taking as we wanted, giving as needed.

Alone of all of us, Didyme received a goddess's helping of lightness! An unadulterated, incredibleness of being, a gift for happiness and joy, an effervescence of spirit. She never wavered nor swayed; in most arenas her delight was childlike. When it came to food and wanton desires, even her avarice was untainted by guilt.

A book written tens of thousands years before, all of her words were inscribed, with no need to ponder the meaning behind them. There was no subscript on the illumined pages of her leatherbound manuscript.

In the beginning, there was little choice. Opening wide, the world was a working of monstrosity mating meeting sublime splendor.

We were naïve creatures, bred of right and good and wrong and wicked. We were but children blessed with purity fighting putrefaction. Taking what we wanted, we were devil-gods who flourished , unencountered, unencumbered, unoccupied but for the fulfillment of our flesh.

Pandora's plenteous box spilled open. An apple rotted. As humanity erupted around us and civilization fledged, the serpentine paradox of our equally intense impulses grew too much to bear, and we sequestered ourselves away. As a pyramid, we built our domain, Volterra; constructed, block upon block, a palace, a barricaded sanctuary to bliss and beastly deeds.

Light and dark encapsulated us. Time never stopped, but we did.

Within our escarpment, with keen excitement and equal disgust, we observed the time lapse of culture and civilization taking root around us. Brick, stone, cobble, mortar, scaling new heights. Towers, spires, religion, government. War, art, conquests and epidemics spreading tendencies in bubonic proportions.

The building blocks of centuries were constructed, step-by-step to a new pinnacle every one hundred years before the entire thing was razed to the earth's depths only to begin again.

Humans were nearly as indestructible as us. Founded on hope and optimism and the idea of righteousness, they spilled blood with thoughts of religious justice running through their veins and managed to hold their heads high above the manglings.

In denial.

At least we understood what we were, and honestly acknowledged our less-than virtuous nature.

Impounded in our castle, _our town,_ our many grew with me and my half brothers always at the center.

For a time, beauty won out. Albeit it was splendor stained by the necessary murder of human beings. We cultivated a standard of civilization through appreciation of works of art, collections of tomes, discussion of the allegedly brightest minds of each decade.

Over and under and through it all was starveling craven decadence. In heaps of naked nubile bodies writhing, those who were making love, those who were made into meals, new hedonism inspired idealism.

In an effort to reshape our own vampire world after the decree of democracy shaping the New World, I called for order and bade our fiendish necromancing brothers and sisters to lay low, to follow my rule, to pave a governed way safeguarding our existence!

Most heeded my law. Volterra became the standard for vampire excellence. And we did excel.

For a time, I was spoiled by my own altruism, thinking myself a god instead of a devil. Yes, I would remain vain. I'd settle for nothing more than president of these denizens of death.

Sightseeing through human nature, at first we created our own Nirvana, learning from their mistakes.

Pontificating, we congressed and conversed on every foul mortal brutal instance of history.

We saw it all.

_None saw us._

And because of my example, it would remain so.

Lethal and evil and damaged. Too much incest, too much time. Too much of any little item**, **replete body, ready skin, red blood **. **Too easy. Nepotism, simony, blight and broiling brutality. Isolated and insular and inward looking.

It was only a matter of time, time that tiptoed forward, brushing away minutes from its path, like the fall of limbs and torsos and heads decapitated, before wastefulness and debauchery and depravity descended.

The midnight killing world outside our den became degenerate. I called order, a round table, everyone had a say as I asked, "Who will stop the humans from discovering us when those disobedient of our kind display drained corpses in midday? What will stop them from finding us? To give name to us, _Vampire_, will be our death knell. A crusade will be born! Us or them?"

I pounded the oak trestle table at which sat my comrades, followers, brothers, sisters.

Obsequiously, their heads nodded, their savage grins grew, their muscles tightened for the nightlit wars to come!

Simple actions began the unfurling of hunger for more and more and more power. A nightwalker in Romania made a slapdash bloody splash in the middle of a village square on market day, and we descended. In black, glittering as jet gemstone, a swish and sway, an army in two lines floating in formation with our billowing cloaks sweeping earth to dust and motes of grit. Birds silenced, people were already asleep, nocturnal insects found cover, and rats and mice and other foragers scampered with their bellies to the ground in search of safety. Our heads hooded, our eyes sharp as hawks, our fingers curled, the red slash of a flag, our standard, billowed ripe like pomegranate pulp in the air at the tail end of our snakelike two tiered column.

The vampire saw doom as it approached.

We didn't need to show our colors for him to know.

There was nothing other than arrogance that caused me to gather all of my soldiers. I liked the swagger, the pomp and circumstance.

The lassitude of sexual trysts – everyday a new orgy of flesh in every permutation possible – and the suckling of life force from sentient beings of a night…it would never have lasted.

This hunt and siege was only the first step.

Our commune grew. Collecting humans instead of simply ingesting their blood, we gathered the brightest.

Jane and Alec were our first aquisitions in this manner. Fine specimens they were; though we had thought to wait until they were older, their extraordinary talents made the humans far too happy to burn them at the stake.

With my power, I bestowed plaisance to those in favor, curtly shirking those that were not.

Jealousies bred.

Jezebels abounded.

Infighting embroiled.

And I would _not _have that.

Making an example of Felix, because – with a touch of my hand to his shoulder – I'd felt a glimmer of disgust at my connubial concupiscence with Jane, I elucidated my lesson. I stood in the middle of our meeting chamber, a cold clammy en-ronde with the only light from the drowning sun silting down in warm dust sprinkles throughout the garrison's high narrow windows. Felix to my side, imagining himself to guard my person when, _really_, it was his own body that was about to be shredded, I spoke with quiet puissance, "If you insist on fighting amongst yourselves, justice will be dealt swiftly."

"_And_, you must never take _this_ Lord's name in vain," at that I cropped Felix's head from his shoulders and pitched it with a smoky explosion to the far wall. His chest, legs, and arms twitched a few times before crumbling, and I beckoned Chelsea forward with one imperial finger lifted to set blaze to him.

Scuffing through the ashen pile he made so a gray flurry dimmed the already muted light, "Let that be a lesson, _my children._"

In the square, evening vespers were heard, courtiers were squiring their mistresses about. Hot full-bodied drinks on legs walked just outside the castle. I gathered my cloak up, walked across air that didn't touch my feet to Heidi and held her to me as I demanded, "I'm hungry now, dear."

To eclipse the uncivil war at hand, I rose above all others. To the highest throne, the King of Volterra. At either side reclined my brothers, lesser placed on the dais in our cylinder shaped shrine. At my back stood my sentinel Chelsea, below my feet sat Didyme, my sister.

Alec and Jane, my toys. Both in bed and out of it, stood in their petite wraith-like wrathful glory like half-columns, flanking my carved, winged chair.

Demetri looked a bit lost without his sidekick Felix. But such was life. _And death._

It was time to revive the fighting spirit and to take the glare off myself.

_Didyme._

She thought I didn't know.

How green and untainted she'd remained!

Beautiful, pale in a regal manner, obsidian and glowing of tresses, she saw the passing of years less than any I'd ever met, even for our own kind!

Her red lips curved into fullness whenever she smiled at Marcus. And he simpered back. When they touched, as if in innocence, electric charges sparked like the brain's synapses into the air.

Of course, I knew.

I couldn't have Didyme undermining my self-appointed role as savior, saint, king. Her allegiance had to be to me alone. Her growing affection for Marcus threatened the stability of our domain.

And he was keeping secrets too! With his gift, he had noted Didyme's interest from the first moment.

Which tie to sever?

Which life to end?

They'd grown so fastly over each other it would be like separating lichen from stone.

I chose.

_I killed._

As one man acting alone, I found myself capable of the most heinous deed imaginable. The idea of how much more could be accomplished with our utopia turned greedy Guard, emboldened me!

I felt remorse, one infinitesimal bit, as I closed her spilling red eyes that would never blink again.

Effortlessly I blamed Didyme's death on Vladimir and Stefan. They'd always been haughty and pompous, full of airs and ways that solidified them as a duo apart from the rest of us.

My young ones were so easy to cajole, connive, corrupt…it was laughable!

Escaping quickly, Stefan and Vladimir fled to Romania and the remainder of their family. With a curse of ages that lit the sky over all the world like a flash of lightning from the crevasse of purgatory itself, they managed to keep my bedeviled army at bay.

_For now._

We didn't stop our expunging, our ethnic cleansing.

With me at the helm and my warriors in rank order, a battalion of vampires for henchman, we soldiered silently, dealing punitive justice. Gray and black and red, we reigned supreme.

Centuries, and more centuries. Time would never stop so long as I lived. I alone fulfilled my birthright, a son of Hades. As soon as he came across Didyme's staged death, Marcus fell into an empty hole. A carcass, a husk of nothing, at least a good kill brought yearning back to dance in his heathen's eyes. Caius followed like a lamb, never tasting the call to slaughter as completely as he should have, forever weak of spleen.

A triumvirate of tyranny.

I introduced excitement, the frisson of peril, to our fruitless lives of fucking and feasting! Nothing was more opulent and far-reaching than our march across Europe, Asia, Russia, and Africa, sniffing out those that dared trespass Volturi Law.

None could stop us in our sweeping path to tame the unruly masses with our own brand of order, Solomon's Seal. Eleazer searched, I called to arms, Chelsea unlocked the bonds of fraternity, Jane imprisoned with physical pain through one look, Alec took away all feeling, and we either made them ours or killed them outright.

All the while, a niggling dormant fear beheld me. Edward knew everything. Seeking euthanasia at my hands, the handsome young man had boldly entered my palace.

I could no more stay from touching him than I could have ceased murdering Didyme. My hand to his cheek, so sharp, fine and high, heightened all of my senses! Sinking back to my feet that had floated on the essence of air, I faltered and broke but for one second. The untouched divine love bursting out of him made a shifting breathing blazing incandescence of my head!

A chink in my armor, thoughts of his _migliore caro_ frightened and beheld me. Weakened, I'd glanced back to Marcus. Straightening like an arrow, taller and more life-like than I'd seen him in hundreds of years, he lost his immunity to this life,and both of us wondered at the eternal mortifying punishing wholesome love of Edward for Bella!

It took but an instant.

My wall disintegrated.

I forgot myself before this noble young vampire.

I allowed him to see inside of _me._

With my hands, still youthful, intact, gripping my sister's neck and sundering it from her shoulders with a whisper of love, beseeching forgiveness, I'd torn her head from her body and tossed it aside as little more than a toy parapet from a fortified wall.

Only Edward knew I crawled through soil, sat with her decapitated head in my lap, wondering if I would put her back together again.

_Only Edward knew what I'd done to Marcus._

Ignorantly, perhaps still hopeful of love, I'd let him go when his paramore had stormed our keep, a magnificent human woman whose limitless physical and incorporeal attributes deserved every one of Edward's poetic imaginings.

We had an understanding.

No more than a mute nod. Man to man.

I would let them live so long as he changed Isabella, and he would keep my secret.

Nevertheless, I worried.

For naught, because the birth of their daughter provided the perfect excuse to soar down and impart unforgettable tutelage of Volturi justice that would be remembered throughout history. Cementing our place as royalty.

The Cullens were next. I needed to keep my bloody hands hidden. With one midnight ride I would tie up all the loose ends: Carlisle the vegetarian who had lived among us but only as a keen student, Eleazer who finally understood that all we had done was not always in the name of integrity. Vladimir and Stefan, my scapegoats.

All who had known us and descried our way of life, making us villains, were to be massacred in Forks.

The cold North American winter moon washed over drifts of dune-like brilliant white snow, as pristine as my skin had been millennia ago. Crimson banners wafted in and out of the near-arctic breeze and shadows made silver streaks in the wide silk ribbons flittering behind us. The dread death march of our cloaked army stole with soft feet and hard deeds.

White to alizarin to grey to black. Silk to snow to an unending dome of starbursts and midnight.

Hulking shapes formed, spiny like branches of pine.

This smell was not of the forest.

A line formed and multiplied, like those jeerers at Christ's crucifixion.

I halted my army with one magisterial hand aloft.

My wide grin cut into the tissue paper skin of my face. But I was still spry.

I remained shrewd.

Legions of vampires and shapeshifters?

Come to me.

_For I am the Apocalypse._

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~Hey there. I think Aro is rather scary! You?~

Also, I replied to all my reviews Saturday night…yes all of them! And then found out fanfiction was in heart failure. So, I don't even know if you got yours, but please know that I tried!

PS. The bids have started for the EPIC **Fandom Gives Back**. Follow my profile. Put your money where your mouth is. I don't care if it's for me or not.


	18. Jealousy

**The Twilight Twenty-Five  
**Prompt: 07. Jealousy  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: People, vampires, etc.  
Rating: M (No Mother-lovin' way!)

To **Viola Cornuta: **so, I bombard you with the most insane, inane emails while I spin my ficcy fickle lickle wheels, and you stroke my ego and put up with my BS. And _try_ to make me stop using 'that'. Cheers, love!

**Disclaimer: **Don't own it.

~~ Hmmm, this started out with an idea from my babe, Liz. However, I went down an entirely different path. It's still for you, Mrs. Slobber~~

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**Jealousy**

Circa 2004, 2017 and various times in between

Forks, Hanover, NYC, London

Edward

An outcast, a loner. I was sixteen years old with no friends to speak of. An invisible boy. The privileged son of the do-gooder Masen forbears who had governed the populace since Forks founding with our charitable trusts and our philanthropic works.

I scorned the banality of high school happenings, preferring to bury my head in books of history, philosophy, architecture…basically anything that would lift me out of this suffocating, sucking, claustrophobic existence.

The very idea of parties with the jocks, the hicks, the druggies, the in-crowd, made me sneer. I favored my piano to my peers, my music and my solitude to the peasantry.

Quite simply, I was a freak.

My appearance didn't help. Wan with a bronze head of devilishly untamed hair, tall, lanky, with green eyes piercing and only a bit muted behind glasses, there was no mistaking me.

Though I ignored them, I still heard the silly giggles of juvenile girls mooning over my supposed broody good looks, and alternately questioning my sexuality when I turned a baleful, glowering eye to them.

It went without saying that I'd be matriculating from my father's alma mater, Dartmouth, and I couldn't fucking wait to get out of the dead-end hell hole of Forks.

A scant change, the moving in of a large family, took my insular world and turned it ass over tits. They were weirder than me!

If I fit about as well as a square peg in a round hole, this odd unit of Cullen-Hales was the stuff small town nightmares were made of.

Glomming onto them when they enrolled during my junior year, a misfit human boy seeking camaraderie amongst a coven of vampires who were masquerading astypical teens**, **I approached the four new students.

They didn't shun me.

I probably should have been thankful, in retrospect, that they didn't hunt me either.

There was Alice. The younger sister none of us ever had. Except, of course, she was far fucking older than I, I learned eventually. Sprightly, tiny, strong as houses and giddy near all the time, Alice filled the world with laughter with each traipsing step.

Emmett was…_Emmett_? Possibly everything I had ever hated about every single varsity athlete I'd come across. Supernaturally strong, steadfastly funny and jovial, he just didn't care. All the world was a stage, and he was but a giant jester!

Rosalie was stunning. Absolutely hard and glassy and glorious in her vampire-made body, sharp of tongue, knifelike of teeth, she killed with pure driven hunger. Protective, a keeper, she was a hard-boiled mother hen and Esme's second-in-command.

Esme, _Esme_. So golden of heart. So filled with love she eclipsed the atmosphere with a durable hug, sometimes a bit too hard to my flesh made delicate in their embraces. Esme created this family and made their manse a secure home.

Carlisle was their father. A learned man, graceful and elegant with a small side smile hinting at the tease of humor he mostly contained inside, he governed through mighty and impressive deeds with soft gentle words. _Walking tall._ A tender-hearted sire to his children.

It was Jasper who called to me most. A fallen angel, he was cherubic and cherished and shorn and shunned. Through hours in his presence, I learned of his past, a detestable history spilling with killing and maiming that seemed so conflicting with his placid nature.

And yet, occasionally, he was rough, riled, at odds with what he'd become. Only a few times in my life was I astounded by the violence that volleyed just beneath the still-lake surface of his hard-won passivity. A hunter of animals instead of people. Most troubled of them all, Jasper and I understood each other.

I didn't know immediately what they were, though they never really hid their true nature from me.

It was the natural order of things, a very weirdly easy circumstance that found me walking down the long light-bearing oak alley to their house, sidetracked by a rare birdsong into the forest**. ** I came across Jasper tearing into a young fawn, plundering claret blood like a man feasting at a trestle table in days of old. Catching sight of me, the blond man growled.

I stepped back, my hands raised.

Eyes turning from obsidian and beastly to amber and still not one bit human, Jasper wiped his mouth on his sleeve and grinned like a friend, not a fiend, "Well, Edward, I guess the cat's out of the bag now."

How could the good -- _I scoffed_ -- people of Forks not see these teens never changed? A group of adolescents who should be growing at a rapid rate looked the same day in and day out for months, a year, and then two years, and no one even batted an eyelash?

I was gladdened by the blind ignorance of the catatonic citizens of the village, for it meant the Cullen-Hales could stay put. With me.

Thus it was that my best friend, my first friend, was a young vampire whose self-loathing I rebuffed by joking with him. Lord knew I'd wanted to kill a fair few people in my own day! I just didn't have the paranormal equipment to do so.

I taught Jasper to lighten up, he allowed me to become his brother.

Those were halcyon days. I knew the love of a family of oddballs such as myself, and they expected nothing more than I gave freely.

_~~ll~~_

February of their first year was surreal.

Another new transplant started at Forks High, and this one was entirely human, completely a girl.

Her initial day made child's play of all Jasper's semi-dormant savage instincts!

In the parking lot, halfway through third period, he raged up and down, spitting, hissing, cursing, taking three steps toward Mr. Banner's Biology class and two steps in retreat to his car.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I grabbed his elbows and he thrust me off with little more than a shiver.

His eyes were a hooded boiling red-black volcano, "_Bella Swan._"

"Chill the fuck out, man! She's just a girl!" I stood in front of him, his nostrils steaming like a bull to a matador.

"No, Edward, you don't understand. She's my _cantante_, my singer! FUCK! Her blood is made for me! I will never know the taste of one such as her again!" Jasper crouched low to a pounce and strafed from side to side in quick fury, pounding the tarmac.

I was fast, but his was the speed of demons.

With a growl from the beastly depths of his stomach, I saw Jasper as never before. A primal killing machine bred for the sole purpose of slaughter.

The mutilated carnage of this Bella Swan would be his end.

I bellowed before he reached the double cafeteria doors, "JASPER! STOP! If you kill her, _you will die._ _You_ will kill your entire family! _Fucking STOP!_"

With a hand fisting around the chain enclosing the metal doors, he shuddered.

I didn't care about her, I cared about him.

Jasper was my brother.

Approaching the wild animal, I whispered and stretched one hand out to his heaving shoulder, "Stop, _brother._ You're stronger than this."

Tugging the padlock apart, Jasper stood to his full height and walked almost sedately through the emptied cafeteria.

He was no longer breathing.

At his heels, I moved along.

I wouldn't be able to stop him.

_I didn't need to._

Insanely, inexorably, his fueled need to imbibe her blood turned, on a dime, to the calamitous want for her heart. An organ that continued beating.

The Cullen clan opened their arms to her. There was enough love to go around, but I was miserly. They nurtured _her_ just as they'd coddled me, and I didn't want to share.

Happening, unhappily, upon her and Jasper locked against each other, heatedly writhing, I gasped and stumbled away.

I didn't even try to understand the virulent upheaval that knotted my guts seeing them together, but I let it out on Jasper when he caught up with me, "Jesus Christ! I thought you wanted to kill her!"

He tore his hands through his gilded curls and spat to the ground, "Fuck, Edward! Would you rather me murder an innocent than try to love her?"

I shook my head, I nodded my chin; I was all over the place.

"You don't understand, Edward. This," Jasper waved his arm about indicating something larger than what I could grasp, "Is something I just can't explain." His bleary blackened eyed worried me.

In pacing toward me, I saw the war of his haggard skin under the inflexible velvetiness of craving, "I can either spill her blood, or fill her with my love…there are only the two extremes to this thing, Edward," Jasper clasped my shoulder and we trudged back down the forest footpath to the house, where she was waiting. I realized life as I'd known it was over.

_Isabella Swan._

I hated her as I'd never hated anyone before. With the full twist of viscera, with the desire to hiss and spit and kick her. _They were my people! My family!_ What right did she have to purloin Jasper, my brother, my best friend, my mashed up kin?

The Cullen-Hales, Carlisle and Esme included, thought it quite amusing the two mortals among them couldn't stand to be in the same room together.

Unsure if Isabella's disgust with me was genuine or simply a reaction to the vile manner in which I treated her, I gave her wide berth.

I suspected Jasper of foul play, using his emotional empathetic abilities to manipulate her affections, but who was I to blame him? I'd have done the same thing in his shoes, had I found this interloper Isabelle Swan one bit attractive.

With the perception I was cursed with, I knew the morning after they'd had sex the first time. Isabella positively glowed with the sensual energy of a woman whose sexuality had been tapped.

For the first time I saw her as beautiful.

Though I continued to goad her publicly by mockingly calling her _Isabella_, when I thought of her, with worrying escalating frequency, I referred to her as Bella.

_Beautiful._

It felt like I despised Jasper.

Cursed, plagued, crushed, confused, I couldn't look at her, and I no longer felt quiet simple camaraderie in Jasper's regard.

Her continued presence was pushing Jasper away from me.

Even with disgraceful intent, I couldn't deny her promising charisma.

In light of this, I tried to make it right, to at least befriend Bella Swan.

That was my downfall.

_~~ll~~_

Finally, we graduated.

With scholarships and my diploma in hand, I was anxious and optimistic. A new life awaited me.

Learning the coven was moving on as well, to Dartmouth as had been planned long ago, I was at once horrified, heartened, heady and spiteful.

My feelings were unwieldy.

Fraught with delight to keep them with me, in all our filial companionship, I was equally daunted by the thought of Bella being so near, still.

She attended Wellesley.

I saw her often.

There was no easement from the push-pull.

Jasper was ever at my side or hers.

The affliction, the disquiet grew. I refused to give it name.

My devotion to my best friend and my burgeoning feeling for his mate -- a woman so obviously created, born, bred to be his lover and lifelong, perhaps even _everlasting_ wife – shrouded me in the garb of devils.

Three years in, Jasper and Bella didn't marry. In lieu they held a small promising ceremony to combine their lifelong, eternal vow to each other.

Ever the martyr, I stood to Jasper's side and smiled through a wide-open throbbing as if my heart were turning to coal.

Older, never wiser, I remained niggardly with my emotions.

They danced, flounced and looked flawless together. Dipping Bella low to the floor, Jasper licked her neck and I cinched my fists so as not to pound him to an unbloodied pulp, knowing any aggression on my part would be ineffectual.

Still together.

I remained alone.

_~~ll~~_

Seven more years.

Like a homing pigeon, I always returned.

Jasper never did adequately explain the unsound profound feeling of love eradicating the need to destroy. Yet I understood the emotion in the marrow of my bones and the pump of my heart.

To New York City I moved.

He used to be my beacon. Now Bella was, perpetually.

Jasper didn't have a choice. With Bella it was either kill her or love her.

I had a choice. And I chose to be with her, in any way conceivable.

She was in my blood.

I fell in love with Bella Swan. Soft and bashful, a wily, bold and sexy creature.

Instead of flourishing, she began to founder. The incandescent light that described her dimmed.

Between us, it started with friendship. Nothing more, nothing less. Human things that none of the Cullen-Hales understood. Dinner at a new restaurant, platonic naps in separate rooms, slow strolls in Central Park. I craved her and she yearned for humankind. Biweekly, our afternoons were both a comfort and the most grueling wracking persecution ever known, because I wanted to not only be near her, I needed to _be with her_!

I held her hand one night as I escorted her back to Jasper. Hers trembled lightly inside of mine, a single page with so many words written and none spoken aloud. At the porch, the light filtered over Bella's face, the sad fashion of her very red lips, highlighting a sheen of wetness that glanced over her eyes turning them from light brown to damp earth.

The following day, Jasper found me. He was bewildered, talking a blue streak that I couldn't understand.

Undeterred by my flustered questioning, merely wanting to know that Bella was alright, Jasper held my throat in his hand and shoved me to the wall, "She's not happy, Edward! What did you say to her last night?"

He could kill me with a small tightening of his muscles.

I didn't care one ounce.

My voice was a shattered thing in my narrowing air-tight windpipe, "Jasper, we barely spoke." I wretched and puked when he released me, bent double I begged, "Don't you fucking hurt her, _brother_."

I warned him and myself.

Unquestionably he loved her, vehemently, venomously. He sought to assuage his blight within her luminescence.

But he was strangling her.

Knowing hope, and loathing myself for taking one solitary measure of joy in his angst, I watched Jasper leave and immediately called Bella.

She held back sobs and asked me, "Can I stay with you?"

For a moment, I envisioned it all.

I could give her what she wanted. A normal life, a husband, children. Passion without inertia.

She knocked on my door. _Rap-rap-taptaptap_.

"I've left him, Edward," Bella announced before she fell to me, exhausted.

I didn't crush her against my body as I wanted to. I placed her tenderly on the sofa in front of the fire where she found the sanctuary of slumber. Waiting for her to waken, I paced and queried and begged for answers and understanding.

Night shaded. She never woke. I covered her and slept, disturbed by weaving wasteful dreams, in the armchair pulled to her side.

In the morning, buttery sunshine cascading through the waterfall of her hair, blinkering my eyes, Bella sat spry and replenished.

She spoke the foulest words. I didn't want to listen, "I'm going back to him, Edward."

For a full six months the taking and giving away and coming and leaving continued with Bella furtively coming to my house for safekeeping.

I never denied her. I never turned Bella away.

How well I understood the pull of Jasper. My friend. _My brother._

Gloomily, garroted, I caressed the empty cavern of my chest, always waiting for her to turn up again.

The ache spread like angina, sucking out my breaths.

I loved Bella. I'd take each moment of her grace no matter how pitifully horrendous the rent in my heart grew every time she departed.

We never approached our feelings. We never made love. I sheltered Bella, and she took care of me. We fed off an unspoken implicit, gloriously equal manifestation of love.

I was confused, punched in the gut over my uxorial, irresistible amore for her and my fraternal, longtime regard for Jasper.

But it was too much; _it_ would never be enough, not for me.

I was her best friend, and that was pretty fucking shitty. No matter how desperately I wanted to hear her, see her, feel her negligent touches, I finally understood nothing less than complete heart-filled love would suffice. Even if I lived forever, to be with her as a friend and nothing more just wasn't worth the suffering.

"I'm going, Bella," I mentioned in passing, playing it off, the next time she knocked on my door.

I abhorred her. I fucking adored her!

All the tears she never shed in my presence flooded past her eyelids in big welling drops that smattered her cheeks and crashed into the gasping wildness of her lips.

I turned my back and she was at my side with grappling hands, tearing my shirt, scratching my arms, scathing my waist, begging me mutely and then with the incensed ripping apart of her heart, her world I once would have loved to become, "Why? WHY!"

The plundering smacking angry fire of her tone met the pummeling of her fists raining blows all over me, and I couldn't look at her for fear I'd crumble and never fucking ever leave this place, leave her, leave Jasper, and never ever find a love untainted and true just for myself.

Stupidly, I chanced one look at Bella. Not even strong enough to shove her out of my house let alone my life, I glanced down and watched complete despair ruin her face, crumpling it so she didn't resemble herself any more.

In the back of my mind I made quick work of justifying this thing I shouldn't be doing, explaining it away as a self-fulfilling prophecy, implying I had no control over my actions as I brought Bella against me, for the first time feeling her round lovely curves flush against my body! Her lips parted, and her eyes shut out a world of sadness and sin.

My thigh between her legs, inclining over her, pressing my chest to her breasts, our lips so close, the desire, the years of waiting, wanting, I'd fucking take whatever I could get…just once!

"Don't tell me you don't feel it too, Bella!"

Her hands found their way to the back of my head, into my hair, tugging me the last space down, against my mouth that was crying and desperate for her kiss, she hoarsely wept, "How could I not, Edward?"

Our lips starved together, silencing words that might be said to halt our love-making.

I'd never before kissed so deeply, never touched so completely, had never felt so thoroughly torn in two, yanked inside out, and then put back together, whole but different!

I smoothed the wrinkles from her brow with my fingertips and pushed her dress down her body.

Fully confident, completely stunning, Bella stepped from the clothes and smiled lightly at my awed staring. Ivory and,when I unhooked her bra, the palest pink. As I lowered her panties, the softest swirl of brown just at the top of her lips.

I kissed her there with a steady open mouth, a tapping of my tongue, overcome by the need so simply _to be with Bella._

Her slender hands shook as she unbuttoned my shirt, over my chest, she smiled, wandered, wondered, "You're so warm, Edward!"

With no need to hold her impulses in check, Bella touched me, undressed me, quickly with greedy abandon. Hands and mouth and lips and tongue caressed each muscle, vein, limb, sinew while I tried to remain upright on my shaking legs. The sounds spilling from me were guttural, grateful, and not of this world.

Gluttonous, ravenous we twined nakedly around each other, and Bella rode all up and down me like a slithering thing, because there was no way I would kill her with slightest ill-timed pressure.

Lifting her, cradling her, amazed at the tender folds and hills of skin settled against me, my cock so high it pushed between the rounds of her buttocks, I brought Bella to my bedroom.

Every inch of flesh touched, tasted, licked. I sucked her nipples into my mouth and Bella moaned backwards into the pillows, "Oh god!"

Trailing like silken skeins her acorn-colored hair corkscrewed over my abdomen descending to my cock in advance of her lips. Supple smooth, her fists, her mouth and wetness all over me, my hips raced closer to her tongue, my hair flattened, my shoulders lifted from the mattress to watch her glide above me, eyes lidded, heavy and melted. Her fingertips surely stroked the jagged triangle of flesh inside the top of my right thigh, through the lacing of hair, noticing the shape that was more pale than the rest of me. A birthmark, a blemish, she'd never seen before.

"I can't, Bella, _I can't_!" I managed to bite out so lowly with my hands to her arms, lifting her, then to her bottom, situating her onto me. Slowly.

Locking her fingers at the nape of my neck, Bella towed me up to her, our bodies mashed together, soft wet, hard hot.

Mouths clashed over breaths, and words we might never speak transmuted to tissue like paper, sucking and biting.

I lowered her with me and thrust with force up into Bella's body. She vibrated above me, quavered around me, sighed, "_Aaaah_, _Edward_."

Sitting up, palms level to my chest, braced right on top of my nipples that worked up and ached with her rubbing, Bella bowed back, and I was so deep. Her thighs were slick, the skin between us sodden with sex and impregnated with us.

I touched the umber pencil-eraser-sized mole inside her cleavage, and the other at the topside of her left breast. I clasped the constellation of freckles on her shoulder blades, dots I'd wanted to trace for more than ten years. Pressing until her breasts hovered above my lips, pink like spring camellias, open and splendid, I licked-kissed-suckled.

Glimpses of uniqueness only a lover could be familiar with.

Our eyes bore into each other's. Bella bit her lip, I nipped her a might too hard, and she dropped onto me with my hands to her waist then her ass.

An increase of motion and her tightness inside strengthened around my cock, squeezing. I kneaded her rear and drew a sliver of skin at the base of her neck in between my lips and teeth. Tearing it just a bit when I came, crying out between clamped tight lips.

Bella beat her fists to my torso twice and then scratched me, digging in, with her fingernails in my ribs and her heels at my knees, superb, supine, stretched taut, spurring me on until she arched sharply and screamed.

Immobilized, she collapsed. I gathered Bella, tossed the blankets over us. One, two, three hours. The dew of sweat cooled, dried. Every breath and brush of skin was miraculous.

Dusk turned sunlight to roses.

Bella unwound herself, sat to the edge. I couldn't resist stroking her spine, sipping at the dimples that punctuated her ass, slipping my hands around to scale her breasts.

She stood.

Tall. Bearing straight. Eyes ahead.

I brought her clothes, balanced her, dressed her.

"I don't regret it," I kissed at her ear and then one more time over her mouth.

At the door, I didn't think I should look at her again. I embraced her, smelled her, felt every single piece of her. I quelled the frantic longing to lock her inside of me.

Clenching my jaw and looking above her head, I turned to Bella as I pushed her away, first by her wrists, then by her hips, lastly by her shoulders drooping, extinguished of fight.

"I'm not sorry." Bella was proud, strong.

Marching her back, I opened the door behind her, held her cheek just to feel that satin skin now mottled with flushed sex and the most soul-deep sorrow. I looked at her ear, the skin of her lobe I'd sucked and nibbled on too recently, down to her chest battling for oxygen.

Because we knew this was goodbye and just couldn't let it go without a rise from the other, not like this, not statues capable of fucking, making love, passionately loving each other and then stoically subduing every human instinct to stay and fight and love and dream and sleep and be. Because of that, Bella's eyes, at my final look, were poisonous polluted brown, undiluted with fury and fright and dread, "So, you got what you were after, did you, Edward? A quick fuck, huh? You finally got in my pants, screwed me good and hard so I'll have trouble walking tomorrow and will never be able to erase the sight of your orgasm washing over your face from inside of my head! And this is _it?_" She yelled and lunged once, managing to scrape a long wound down the middle of my bare chest.

Unable to recognize the gravelly mortuary heap of my voice, knowing it was mine, I spoke in a hush, slowly so Bella would never mistake my words even though she would understand the truth, the falseness of my intent, "Yes, _Isabella_. Something like that."

Her orbs turned to graves of dirt.

"Don't_, don't go_."

This was not grace.

"It's not so nice when the other person is leaving, is it Isabella?"

I never wanted this.

In denial, despite my repulsive words, Bella leaned up with one hand to my face and the other lowering my chin, so I had to watch the light leaving her eyes in goodbye, "I don't believe you, Edward."

I shut the door and collapsed against the frail barrier, knowing she was stood paralyzed on my stoop, "I love you."

_~~ll~~_

Bella was right not to believe me.

I couldn't change the path of time.

I couldn't scrub away my heart's only passion.

I was unable to cease reliving the exact moment I'd buried myself so deeply inside Bella I didn't understand in from out, life from death, love from hate.

I could never forget the past.

I'd already forfeited my future.

I ran and ran and ran.

_So alone._

_~~ll~~_

I didn't hear from Jasper or from Bella. That was to be expected. I'd left no forwarding address for my sabbatical from New York University, a station beneath me I'd accepted to be near her. I spoke to my parents, who were still proud citizens of Forks, as often as I could stand the hurt in their voices, their disappointment that I'd left the country, their remorse that at twenty-nine years old, I was still on my own.

The snake ate at me; the gawping hole where my heart was supposed to beat riddled me. I thought I hid it well enough to go about my daily business, but I caught the pitying looks, the sidelong glances, the whispers that ceased when I entered a room.

Returning from a few pints at The Punch and Judy in Covent Garden, I'd made my way from the tube stop through what was formerly known as Hyde Park to my terraced house.

I was just closing my door, locking the deadbolt, when a knock resounded outside. A _rap-rap-tap-tap-tap_ I recognized.

Immediately spinning, pining and feeling faint, I slowly unloosed the chain and pushed down on the latch.

Isabella. _Bella._

A flush stole across her cheeks. A bloom and new roundness made a novel and intriguing and gorgeous rendering of her features.

My heart quailed, then sped as if to take flight on downy wings.

For a small instant, she leaned into the doorjamb, fatigue sliding over her form.

Wanting to hug her close, hold her so hard, push my hands through her long chestnut waves, and sink to my knees at her feet never to let her go, I was cast in place, a gargoyle, as my blood crashed to the outer reaches of my limbs and up through my brain with toppling dizzying speed!

I couldn't smile or frown or express anything other than stupefaction.

I simply could not take her to me again only to have her depart for Jasper one more fucking time.

Fear beat back the faintest bit of hope, and I hardened into rigid plains. My lips were stony, and the words I uttered low and bleak, "Bella, please leave. Don't do this to me again."

She paled and wrapped both hands around her stomach; I followed the action like a man enthralled.

"Oh!" she exclaimed as she clamored a bit more closely to me.

My posture shifted, muscles unleashed, my heart understood what my head would not.

Placing my hand just above hers, atop her belly, I felt it too.

The flutter-kick of a being inside the sweetling swelling of her womb.

A palm over mine skimmed my hand over engorged breasts that beat rapidly like a frightened rabbit's, over the elegant neck I'd only tasted once, to her mouth that was open so gusts of hot air warmed my fingertips and words I never imagined I'd hear made a moist shape on my skin, "Edward, I've loved you for a very long time."

My eyes closed then opened as I read the truth in her slight smile; shy, wishing, wanting, hoping.

A grin made my lips widen, a spark flared finally, _finally, _in my seaglass eyes.

Wonder made me bend low to suckle and nuzzle the corner of her berry mouth so that I heard, and felt, something I knew to be real and us and forever, "_Edward._ I love you!"

I heaved against Bella to be brought up short by the bulge between us and her giggle of absolute joy, **"**Edward! I'm pregnant with your child."

Shaking my head, I stopped thinking. I did find myself on my knees, my face to her belly bursting with a life we'd created. I crawled backwards off the steps and into my house, pulling Bella with me.

Around her gorgeous, life giving, robust body, I slammed the door shut and laughed against our baby inside.

_Inside_, we were shielded.

_Inside_, we were home.

Outside, Jasper remained. I didn't know where, or what Bella had told him though I was certain, knowing him as I did as my brother for all these years, his torment would rival my own.

_His _would last for infinity.

Even while it healed, my heart broke.

This _was_ grace, without perfection.

I raised my eyes and felt the trickle of tears sliding down my face to be followed by Bella's fingers. I smiled through the liquid. I stood again. I breathed. I felt her. I understood haven and blessing.

And belonging.

And Heaven.

Kissing longly, deeply, wetly, I plucked away just once to be certain, "Bella, _please_, don't ever leave me again."

She shook her head so vehemently that even her tum jiggled against me, "You are my home, my love."

* * *

~Tissues?~

Thanks ladies for the love, let me know what you think of this variation on Jealousy! I just read through it after posting (pesky spelling errors!) and am not entirely happy with some of the passages, so, apologies for that.

Just a quick reminder: **The Fandom Gives Back**, all information and links on my profile.


	19. The Sky is Falling, It's a Drabble!

**The Twilight Twenty-Five  
**Prompt: 09. Light

Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing:. Zafrina, Senna, Kachiri  
Rating: M-ish

Hiya. Many, many thanks to **Viola Cornuta**!

**Disclaimer**: honestly, would SM ever dream of a femme slash threesome? *snort*, don't think so. _That's not really much of a disclaimer, is it?_

~What's this? A drabble? I know, right? And we only had to cut out 5,469 words! So, Kari, you can rest easy, and perhaps allow me a chapter in your upcoming fic?~

* * *

**Light**

Circa 1851

The Amazon

Joham

Pouncing jaguars, stifling chromatic vegetation.

_Three._

Coiling boa constrictors, lustrous earthy skin, wiry wild locks, sinews, writhing wet lips to dark nipples, humid feminine flesh.

Birds of Paradise shrieked atop Kapok, flittering vivid plumes amidst shredded light dappling to forest floor.

_Three._

Muggy, musky, pungent, their unguent cries, sighs, moans, sifted sucks, mouthing sex over slick nether lips.

Piranha jumped.

Capybara disarrayed grasses in escape.

Caimans swished deadly retreat.

_Vampires_. Erotically bound, hips hedonistically close, anaconda.

_Zafrina, Senna, Kachiri._

Trapped by the crash-howl of acrobatic orgasms. Pursuing any misguided mortal woman to relieve the groin-jerking ache, I, Joham, became Incubus.

* * *

~Is this your favorite? Bwah ha ha! Now, don't for one minute think I'm going to make a habit of this, because I'm not. But what did you think?~

PS. I totally forgot to title Chapter 16, Aesthetic, when I posted. That was a mistake, not intentional .

Rie~


	20. Stagnant

The Twilight Twenty-Five  
Prompt: 19. Stagnant  
Peen name (ha ha ha, guess who's getting punchy?): goldenmeadow  
Pairing: Charlie and…  
Rating: M

Why, thank you kindly **Miss Vi** for kicking my ass into gear and not letting me get lazy and sloppy as well as filling in my blanks (oooer).

**Disclaimer: **All I can say is, Billy Burke, I LOVE YOU (have you seen the movie yet?)! Oh, uh, don't own Twilight.

~~This was written for **sensecoalition**. She gave me her idea, I said, "Nah," initially because I was feeling wimpy. But then I grew a pair, admittedly they're not as big as Charlie's cajones! So, here's **STAG**. Thanks Tosh for your help~~

* * *

**Stagnant**

Circa 2007

Forks, WA

Charlie

Tugging back my Rainier, cold from the icebox, I leaned against the buzzing refrigerator. Swiping the back of my broad hand over my mouth, my 'stache tickled my fingers that gathered drops of alcohol. I wiped the liquid on my khaki clad thighs and turned to inspect the empty innards of the fridge.

Opening the freezer door, I rummaged around for the last paper sack of bass, frozen like fishy planks.

Smacking the package onto the melamine counter, I ground my booted feet to the warped linoleum. Another drink, another night. Same fuckin' kettle of fish.

I had my fish and the six-pack I'd picked up on my way back from the station. I was good. The scaly water-bound creatures met the protein section of the food pyramid, my beer of grains, hops and barley made up the cereal portion. Two out of five major food groups wasn't something to sniff at. Hell, I could even add veggies to the list while I was at it, I decided as I glugged two inches of vegetable oil to the skillet I'd wiped down with Brawny the night before.

The pop and sizzle started, I flipped open another tin and grinned at the crackle. Yeah, this was better'n Rice Krispies by a longshot. And fuck Wheaties, _this_ was the breakfast, lunch and dinner of champions.

Looking for my one clean plate and a cheap, sharp tined fork, I faltered at the sight of a lone box of Cherry Pop-Tarts.

Shit had a shelf life to rival Twinkies.

Frying the freezer burn off my fillets, I smashed them to the bottom of the pan and then lifted the greasy fried mess to my plate, soaking up the oil with my last remaining half-paper towel.

Hunched over the counter -- I wasn't fancy enough to have a _kitchen island_ -- I opened the buttons at my neck, ran my hand over my throat to loosen the tension, grabbed another can of beer and started munching through the limp tasteless fish.

Maybe a lemon, tartar sauce, or some garnish would help. But I didn't really give a good goddamn.

Halfway through my rubbery feast, almost all the way through my drinks, not buzzed enough, the fine black hairs on my nape bristled.

Emptying the gutted remains, the raiment of fish innards into the trash, I added the platter and fork to the growing pile in the sink that was beginning to stink and rot.

Hefting my .22 from the unsteady table, I squared it to my shoulders, running my index finger across the sights.

Widening my stance, I inspected the munitions, reloaded, cocked my gun.

My moustache twitched. The fucking thing had a sixth sense for trouble.

The pleasant pyramid of beer cans I'd made in a foul stupor the previous night collapsed when my thigh bumped the tabletop.

Something canine was causing its habitual racket out back.

I ran my forefinger between the bristles and my upper lip, sinisterly grinning at either the fight or the fuck to come.

This was what I waited for, all fucking day long.

My budgies were going goddamn nuts in the living room! Battering against their captivity, shredding their frail pastel plumes against the bars of the old-fashioned gilded cage.

I called the pair Renee and Phil.

One was yellow. The other…_more yellow._ Bile, spleen, liver, shallow, weak.

Stomping to the front room, I threw a dark blanket over their prisons, clucking and tsking at them.

They fucking hated this time of night.

But I couldn't very well keep a dog as a pet, could I? _Man's best friend and all that._ I chuckled underbreath.

I rolled up my shirtsleeves, picked up my shotgun again, and strolled through the back door onto the titling festering porch where one beam of light filled my yard of overgrown weeds and neglected cedars and cottonwoods.

Finding I needed to see in the night, I'd _borrowed_ the glaring halogen bulb from the janitor's closet at the station.

Cradling the weapon like a newborn baby in the bend of my elbows, fighting back the nostalgic feel of an infant nestled there, a grin squirreled up the tail of my moustache.

_Come to me, she-wolf._

A howl rent the air, my birds screeched inside. My cock lifted and filled. I rammed my gun once more, aiming it at the leafy surrounds.

From the wolds that backed the debacle of my property, she shouldered forth. Wide torso, slavering mouth, razor teeth, filthy matted hair the color of shit.

Rain drizzled. I wiped my eyes, made a cloth of my palm and gathered the wet, flicking it off my hands.

There was no mistaking the smell of wet dog.

Shaking and slaking off her inhuman form, the bitch took to mortal footing as she gained the last acre between us.

_So, she'd be a woman tonight._

Completely nude, stunning, she stood tall and proud while loping the last paces. Moonlight glided over her, a fabrication of platinum caressing her russet skin.

Black as tamped out ash, her hair striated to her waist like a midnight curtain, a few tendrils linking like handcuffs around her nipples. Dark as the burnt-out charcoal in my malfunctioning grill, her eyes drilled into me. High up on her tits, a perfect handful, her nipples were ruddy. They reddened more, like a whore's rouge, when I placed my shotgun on the lax plastic woven mildewed seat of the one lawn chair I owned.

Her bearing never ceased to amaze me. Proud as her heritage, her stance was sure and graceful, her flesh illumined like sealskin underneath Arctic seas. Just as wet and glorious and soft.

To her waist, _Fuck me!_ The hour glass imagery was no joke, not with her! I'd already encircled that container with both my hands, my fingers near meeting in the middle of her back, above the button-dimples of her ass cheeks.

My fingers clenched.

She growled.

I wanted the telescopic piece of my .22 so I could more accurately focus on every erogenous revealed bit of her. Her thighs, long, supple and tenacious, her unshod feet with perfect arches tripped lightly over loam, her belly was taut as a tent's canvas sides staked to ground.

And my dick tore at my zipper like a peg that wanted to sink into her soil with hammer blows.

_Fuck_. I'd never tire of the vision she made. No longer a wolf, Leah was a fox.

Her voice was like the waves of the ocean at First Beach, salty and saturated, sensual, "Fuck's sake, Charlie. Holster that weapon already!"

Leah smirked at me, shook out her locks like a damp show dog, and walked past me into my tumble down clapboard house.

I emptied the cartridge and listened to her elegant movements inside, the little snide asides muttered: _Fucking fish again? Jesus Fuck, shut those birds up already! Christ I'm so hungry they almost smell good._

"You stink like a rank dog, Leah," my nose wrinkled in distaste even while my eyes feasted, un-blinded, on her high breasts that were just this side of too heavy through the bottom bow and paler than the rest of her sienna skin.

One of her slim black eyebrows rose in mockery, and she stood even taller so her tits jutted out, teasing me, "And you smell like rotten fish, Charlie. In fact this whole house does, it's enough to make me…_rabid._"

I pushed Leah into the shower stall, possibly more a shitty thing than what she'd been accustomed to in La Push High locker room.

Running to my cruiser, I turned on my spinning red-blue lights and hit the pathetic little grocers for any fresh fruit in season and a huge juicy T-bone.

In my absence, Leah had covered herself, _unfortunately_, in one of my crewneck standard issue T's.

She was teasing Renee and Phil, working them up to a squawking cacophony with guttural threats, "Like your little chicken wings could appease me. Although, Renee, Phil, if Charlie doesn't hurry back I might just tuck into a drumstick."

Playing hide and seek with their blind.

_She really was a bitch._

I made a quick salad of pineapple and kiwi, placing the bowl at the table. Always running to super human temperatures, Leah overheated while I grilled her steak, and she lifted the shirt up over her head. Seated at the table, stark naked, "I'm hot," she smirked, fanning herself with a napkin she must have found in the back of beyond because I sure as hell hadn't bought any…ever.

_Yeah, you're damn right you're hot._

My tongue worked into the creases of my mouth, my moustache folded up with my grin.

_Goddamn, this girl was amazing!_

All of twenty years old, she'd discovered her genetic nature in late adolescence. A glimmer of a thought that a coven of vampires _might_ descend had caused one fourth of the Quileute youth to shape shift.

Nothing ever came of it.

Feeling secure, imagining her brothers to be safe, the only girl amongst an obnoxious pack of teen boys, Leah had broken off. The fact they could read her mind, see her every thought and action was worse than a little brother breaking the fragile lock on a diary and reading the dampest darkest secrets.

I watched Leah eat until I could stand it no more.

Ducking beneath the low crooked lintel, I entered the bathroom, shed my clothes and showered, smelling all of Leah on my belongings.

The only daughter of my close friends Harry and Sue, older sister to Seth, Leah had been in and out of my life since pigtails and piggyback rides. I used to be Uncle Charlie. When she was in a particularly feisty mood, she wrenched my hair in her two fists, full of wiry strength, and kissed me with the fury being a byblow in a family of werewolves caused, hissing in my mouth, "You like that, _Uncle Charlie_?"

I was a lowlife, a fucking cradle robber, and whatever the hell the male equivalent of Mrs. Robinson was.

Not a goddamn sugar daddy, because I certainly wasn't sweet.

Screwing my best friend's daughter.

Fucking loving every minute of it too.

I couldn't grasp her attraction though. Did she come to me for excitement? Well, that sure as hell wasn't likely. I was about as exciting as the chance of rain in Forks, _ha!_

Maybe it was just the thrill of getting caught, of living up to her reputation as the black sheep of the Clearwater family.

For stability? Doubtful. That was a boring thing for a young gorgeous woman to seek. Yeah, I owned my house mortgage free, the piece of shit falling apart shanty, drove my cruiser, kept 'law and order' – what a joke in this one-horse-town -- but I was anything but _stable_. No, I was stagnant. And there was a fucking world of difference.

And her family, the elders on the Rez, the pack she insulted and hid from were far more steady than me.

I'd been left by my wife ten years ago. With little more than a, "Fuck you," Renee had bundled Bella up and driven off to warmer climes. I doubted she would even have taken the time to curse me had I not stumbled over her packed suitcase while searching for a new box of shotgun shells on the top shelf of the hall closet.

Did I have it coming? Probably. I was less than a good husband. But I provided, I loved them, I _protected_ them. Fuck, I'd never said I was perfect. Renee and her pipe dreams couldn't handle this grotty place, and I just couldn't unstick my legs from the quagmire.

I even changed my ways for a time, but they never returned. About every three months my mailbox puked out a postcard from one Southwestern town or another. Last time a note came it was from Fairbanks, Alaska. Bella was up there studying 'wildlife biology' or some such, maybe putting space between her and her mother. Smart girl, but in the past year there'd been nothin' but stone cold silence,

Static. Unmoving, Debilitated. Disgruntled, crotchety even.

Disjointed to Leah's distemper.

I hunkered behind my bulkhead, quite fucking happy to perish in place like a living corpse.

Then _she'd_ raced straight through the two stop signs on Main Street in her souped-up Mustang five months ago.

Instead of a ticket, I gave her a warning.

Instead of apologizing or declaring, "Chief Swan, I'll never ignore the rules of the road again," Leah had looked into my eyes and smiled like a beautiful black-hearted witch.

I'd gulped, my breath had hitched, my evil cock twitched, and I had her on the hood of her slate blue Ford while the engine purred beneath us.

The stalemate descended by Renee and Bella's leaving lifted. Not like a new dawn, but more like the sun revealed after a full eclipse. The day was still dark, yet too intense. Unnatural and spinning spots in the retina.

When I imagined someone, an upholder of the peace no less, doing this to my estranged daughter, I almost felt enraged. But it had been too long since I'd been a father figure; I didn't relate to those feelings of paternal protectiveness anymore.

I didn't feel self-pity, why would I? I was the lucky fucker boning Leah Clearwater.

I simply didn't feel. Unless Leah was here.

I pulled on jeans that had seen better days and a washing far too long ago. Running a palm over my chest, I lanked back into the kitchen's brightness, accepting I'd never understand why Leah came to me.

A caged bird freed from expectations, maybe. Fuck knows I had no hope of having her, completely.

My prospects narrowed, every year.

Like a gold miner stuck in a sulfurous cavern with no way out, lonely cancer eating my marrow, I took with both hands her offering.

And the canaries suffocated on fumes.

Leah was wiping her mouth with yet another napkin I didn't remember purchasing, and her plate was licked clean.

_Fuck, I want to lick her clean out!_

She crooked her finger, shoved the dinner plate across the table top with a fingernails-to-chalkboard screech, opened her thighs slightly so I could hardly see the earthen swollen lips ready for me, and shook her head at the sight of my erection reaching in a nice long cylindrical shape in my jeans.

_My striking, statuesque bitch in heat._

Before her face, I unbuttoned my fly and pulled the fabric apart just enough to tease my dirty little dingo. She neither moaned nor shook, but her legs spread wider, and her hands gripped the tabletop and the chair seat.

I leaned over and placed my lips against hers, wide and closed, moving back and forth and pressing hard before our tongues touched, to lick softly, nip gently, my hand up the back of her head enveloped in lush jet strands.

We didn't waste any time. The boys would be out running the reservation perimeter, and Leah had to get back before they questioned her whereabouts.

On my knees, I sucked her cunt with my entire mouth, kissing it and moaning at her musky taste. Leah sat up straight, staring at me, her lips like dark chocolate cherries gasping while I bit and bit and then plunged right into that den. Her hips rose off the cracked oak seat. Winking at me, her clitoris peeked out like the tiny rosy beak of a parakeet, and I lapped it sensuously, slowly.

I stood, she shoved me back. My denim clad knees hit the edge of the one other kitchen chair I owned. Both the chair and I wobbled on our legs. As if wolf-like again, Leah shredded my pants and panted into my mouth while she sucked my tongue with the flush thrust of her own.

My cock reared up like an untamed stallion, already wet at the head.

I grumbled but didn't voice displeasure when she pushed on my shoulders so I toppled to the seat.

A gurgle was building in my groin.

Granted, I wasn't overly fond of Leah's canine incarnation, nor her stench, but as a woman she was lissome, leggy. And she fucking knew just what to do.

She was so foxy. Leah friggin' hated when I said that, stubbornly claiming, "Wrong genus, asshole."

Straddling my lap, she encircled my dick with the lightest touch, testing the reddened wide head, painting the small drops of cum up and down my shaft so I was good and wet and ready and greedy.

With erotic propinquity, Leah stretched up and settled down, enjoying the motion of me filling her, throwing her head, her splendid carved face back as a bitten-off howl shook the greasy dank window panes.

In front of me, right at sucking level, her chocolate nipples balanced my diet**,** taunted my mouth until I tucked them in with both my hands squashing her tits together.

_What a treat!_

She rode me hard and fast, and then fashioned back like the trembling wire of a bow, hands gripping my knees and straight charred hair licking my thighs to move in sensual slow motion.

Complete fucking torture.

_Goddamn!_

When she arranged herself atop my cock properly again, her eyes were brown as a dung heap, steaming with lust.

I pistoned up into Leah like the biggest _engine that could._

Her fingernails tore at my chest and ripped against my armpits, and the feathery refraction of her orgasm suctioned me with wings that beat like a _flap-flap-flap,_ until I came with an enormous groan and a lunge that reared the chair to its backlegs and then over onto the dusty dirty floor!

I held her tight to me, still cumming hard, my hips wouldn't stop rushing up even while we laughed at the torrent of fucking sex that found us splayed crosswise over a busted-up chair on my kitchen floor!

Finally disentangling ourselves from the crushed wood and broken spindles, Leah stood and I followed.

To the back door, I wanted to press clothing upon her. Her back was a rash of red and my fingerprints were all over her.

A small bird's nest lifted a few hanks of hair. I smoothed it down.

My chin over her head, my hands coiled around her waist, my chest to her spine.

_I loved this moment the most, touching her._

_I hated it more than anything._

_Leah, leaving me._

I wondered what it would feel like to have her lithesome limbs wrapped around me all night long.

Reaching around, I made her cheek fit the bowl of my palm and kissed her so simply, watching her eyes return to sea-torn sand.

There were words at the back of my throat, gagging me.

Silencing myself, I settled for a pure kiss that was lips alone.

I patted her bottom and watched her jet off the porch, taking the form of her ancestors midair.

Exhausted, I closed the door, beating it until it sat properly in the moldy jamb.

I righted the chairs, threw the dirty dishes in the sink, turned off the lights.

I left the back floodlight on.

_~~ll~~_

In the morning I pounded my alarm clock. Fucking five-thirty a-em.

I scrubbed my face, brushed my teeth, didn't look at my blood shot eyes.

I'd assumed I'd feel like a dirty old man the second after I'd first had Leah. Lecherous, leprous thoughts never came. Instead I felt enlivened. With her.

But you know what they say, bed down with dogs and wake up with fleas.

I didn't arouse to the biting midges, just a healthy dose of guilt, the thing I denied, the thing that rankled like putrid fish guts.

In the kitchen, the fluorescent light on its last legs and buzzing louder than a host of cicadas, I drowned out the morning, mourning, with my last can of Ranier. Grabbing a piece of toast, I jeered at the Jays with my tin, topping it back. The piss-warm bitter lager chased its scratchy way down my throat.

Her scent, damp-wet, filtered into my house first.

This was unexpected.

Any change to my routine was worrisome. Breaking the mold of fishing, drinking and fucking Leah, filled me to the top of my ulcerous stomach with bile.

Visibly shaken, Leah lingered at the doorway.

I put my can down and approached with caution, "You're not already raggin' again, are?"

I spun on my heels to inspect the free calendar sent to me from Bubba's Garage. "'Cause I mark that shit down, and it says here you're not due for another two weeks."

"Fuck you, Charlie," she gritted out. How well I remembered those words.

My heart sped and spluttered and faltered.

_Was this goodbye?_

Fucking hell, I wasn't ready for this, not at six in the morning.

She had her cutoffs tied to her ankle. Something she'd never done before. One more thing to cut a slash of anxiety right through my heaving heart.

"Sit down, old man," she demanded.

_Oh Christ, I wasn't ready for this again._

I fell to the last remaining chair.

Blood pounded in my ears.

I couldn't stop ingesting the sight of her, nude. I thought this would be the last time I'd see her so.

Pacing, ranting underbreath, tears worked up into her eyes that had never fucking looked so lost or fawn-like or delicate.

"Harry had a heart attack," Leah spat.

I slumped with my head to my hands.

"I joined the pack, Charlie. They've seen _everything._ Harry heard if from Seth. My mom tried to stop him!" She crouched and ground her forehead to her supernaturally strong palms, "He was on his way here. I ran. _I ran!_ "

Her moan was keening and wailing, "I pounded the woods, razed madrona, denied him the path…his heart sped so fast, _so fucking fast_, Charlie." She couldn't look at me. I could no longer see through the tears that saturated my moustache.

"I couldn't stop it happening. _I made it happen!_"

I finally understood Leah's propensity to shoulder the weight of the fucking world!

"He's dead."

I crawled to her, formed a cradle around her.

I shushed her, rocked her, cried with her.

My fucking best friend died because of us!

Suddenly possessed, savage more than usual, Leah exploded out of my embrace and erupted like Mount St. Helena above me, "That's not all. Why don't you ask the reason I went back to Sam and Jacob in the first place?"

I could see the turmoil of foamy churned up Pacific waves in her eyes, "What. Happened?"

She laughed bleakly and then railed at feathered Renee and Phil who rallied in the front room. A deep breath, one hand to my cold stovetop, the other untwisting the twine about her ankle, "It's your daughter, Charlie."

My forehead caved in, my heart jolted, I stood against the fridge, freezing fucking cold, "What?"

She shrank and looked like a lost girl for the first time, "The Cold Ones are back, and they have Bella."

She soldiered through the inimitable anguish of her father's death, bearing majestic, my favorite deadly sneer on her face, "We're going now. We will return her."

Pulling up her shorts, a threadbare t-shirt over her braless tits, Leah brushed past me, and I grabbed her hand, my eyes wide open, "You fucking better come back to me, Leah." I squashed her against me, "Don't lose my daughter," I gasped.

The door opened, and I grappled it back.

Leah waved, and that gesture was far too fucking bleak for my liking.

I checked my guns, my outposts, jumped into my sedan three times with the keys jangling, but what the fuck could I do in the frightening battle of paranormal proportions taking place.

I stomped the gas peddle, flooding the engine. Choking with inability.

Harry was dead.

_Fuck's sake._

I cried for the first time since Renee had left me.

I wanted to go to the morgue, I _needed_ to make my way to the warfront.

I did nothing.

I didn't even drink.

The hemlocks outback shivered.

Rain splattered me as I sat on the steps, waiting.

Nothing could save me.

My daughter's life was in the hands of wolves and vampires. My woman was at the forefront of the fray.

That last flurry of motion blurred my mind, chaos reigned.

_I didn't love her. Did I?_

The oak at the bottom of my yard parted with a skirmish.

I stood.

I raised my gun.

I hoped.

_Oh Christ!_ It was Leah. Leah in clothes.

Leah with two people following behind.

I met her at the verge and looked over her shoulder, and shattered against her, "I thought you'd never come back."

More a woman than ever, she hugged me to her, hard and tight, "It's done."

I wanted to kiss her.

I couldn't.

Pulling my nineteen-year-old daughter from her shelter, Leah announced so graciously, "Bella, this is your dad."

I sturdied my feet, opened my palm, remembered in the one moment her hand met mine all the times I'd swayed across the now rank kitchen with her tiny newborn body in the crook of my arms.

"_Bella!"_ I latched onto her.

Leah cleared her throat, and I caught her smug expression, _I knew her so well._

A taller, darker, fiery haired man stepped forth as Bella introduced, "Charlie, please meet Edward Cullen. I met him in Fairbanks, where we were lab partners."

My nose flared, my eyes blared, I shielded Bella behind my back. He smelled too sweet. Honey and saccharine.

His eyes glowed bullion.

His hands reached beyond me to Bella.

I wondered where the fuck I'd put my rifle. "Bella, I haven't seen you in dog's years and you really think I'm going to hand you off to a vampire without a single word with the boy?"

Bella rebounded on me, shaking her head at Edward, "Charlie, contrary to the beliefs of Jacob and his crew, the Cullens haven't abducted me. I'm here, _with them_, of my own free will. _We're all here for you._ Because I needed to see you. And I'm _with_ Edward because I love him. And,

_Dad_, he's actually over a hundredso you might want to rethink calling him 'boy'."

"Fuck, Bella, I don't care if he's as old as Methuselah. He's a goddamn leech! _For the love of all that's unholy….why?"_ I held my arm out to keep vampboy at bay while I interrogated my own daughter.

"Oh yeah? And what about her?" Bella tilted her head to Leah, perceptively reading the sway of my body towards the half-mortal woman that was my…_helpmeet_?

"Face it, Dad, we're both just magnets for the supernatural. If you can have Leah, then I can have Edward," she punctuated her declaration with a hug that had me frowning before reaching to Edward, one hand in mine and one in his, linking light and dark and life and death and an arc of the most fucked-up love.

She whispered up to me, "_Besides, Edward says she stinks!"_

I glowered at her with a grin that wouldn't be suppressed while Leah bared her canines and growled, "Bella, mind your manners."

My daughter apologized and stepped around me, steeping herself in Edward's hug.

Only then did they both seem right.

Like young lovers, like the nightmare of the past vacuous years, the bedlam of the most recent five hours, had never been, Bella and Edward held hands and strolled up the deck ahead of us.

An explosion of disgruntled chirps and squawks called all the way out to the yard where I held back. Renee and Phil had their short and rufflies all atwitter; it appeared they liked the Cold One even less than Leah. Leah smirked, as if she could read my mind, "At least Tweety and Twatty have their priorities straight."

I didn't laugh.

_This had been too fucking close._

I kissed Leah's cheek, held her waist, "Jesus, Leah! I thought you'd never return!"

She pulled away with her hands at my wrists, staying me, "You're not my kind, Charlie." She turned around and beat the fence, "This isn't right."

I met her back. "And what of them?" I nodded my head to the house and the bloodsucker, my Bella's lover, within.

I understood it all now.

Leah was my opposite. Her world, her body was out of control. Mine had stopped. Excitement to constancy.

She refused to look at me.

She stepped forward, breaking against me like waves to a shoal, relinquishing darkness.

The old adage was true:

_Be careful what you wish for._

Now I had a daughter who was dating a vampire, and my love was a she-wolf.

_Now I had too much._

_

* * *

  
_

~~Can I get a _Hell Yes_ for Charlie and Leah?~

Huge thanks to the gatekeeper of my sanity and my very good friend BellaSTjerne for being my winning bidder for the Fandom Gives Back! She's rescinded her original request and has purchased for me instead the gift of R&R as well as a call for me to take some time to work on my own writing. Thank you, darling, that's possibly the sweetest thing anyone's ever done for me!

Fandom Totals at the moment stand at nearly $70,000!!! Though I'm not sure if that includes the auction or not.

Standing ovation to everyone who donated, participated, and bid!


	21. Retrobution

**The Twilight Twenty-five**

Prompt: 15. Retribution

Pen name: goldenmeadow

Pairing: Emmett/Rosie

Rating: T (yes, for real)

~~For my Bubba, _oops!_ I mean Emmett lovers: Jenn and Kat. In addition, this sprang from an interesting discussion of the rare appearance of less-than-perfect, slim chicks and un-hung-like-a-horse boys in fanfic~~

Thanks **Gasaway Alley** for the car-talk.

PS. Yes, I am calling it Retrobution, because I'm silly like that...

* * *

**Retrobution**

Circa 1959

Detroit, MI

Emmett

Yeah, this was my era.

With the birth of rock 'n' roll, the new prosperity of the Nifty Fifties, the rising hemline, I was in my element. Girls whose bodies were round, juicy and ripe replaced the waisted forms of the Forties. And thank fuck I didn't have to relive the Roaring Twenties again. It'd been bad enough as a human boy. Skinny Twenties would've been a more appropriate nickname for that decade. I mean, just because there was a Depression didn't mean a woman had to let herself go to wrack and ruin.

_Flappers._ Christ, what an abhorrence of nature. Rail thin and flat as boards, there was nothing to hold onto with those waifish forms!

I liked a bit of meat on the bones, and I wasn't just talking about my nightly meal of antelope, bear or whatever other animal I came across.

I'd already been around for twenty more years than my death at the age of twenty. Damn, I was sick and tired of that number!

In 1935 a gentle woman by the name of Esme had happened across my heaped up, gut-spilling, near lifeless corpse in the woods of the Smoky Mountains. My intestines were mounds of linked viscera spilling racing red streams across a frostbitten ground, warming iced over fallen leaves so their serrated tips curled and dyed a deeper crimson than autumn alone had wrought. A hunting trip, an accident, a gunshot wound to my belly, and I was left for dead.

Miss Esme sang to me like an angel. Saying goodbye to the world, I closed my eyes on the shock that replaced the stamp of saturating horrendous agony. Her embrace was more frigid than the November dusk. My shaking started, but she held me firm, this slight woman clamping all six three brawny feet of me to the ground. The dying sun glinted across her grim mouth; my throat was numbed and stunned. I hardly felt a thing compared to the buckshot when it entered my gut and spread outward to my stomach, my liver, my kidneys and spleen.

Waking with a burst of adrenaline after a goddamn tortuous, flame-licking-the-insides-of-my-bones eternity, I was just where I'd fallen. My blood had dried to rust colored ice. Miraculously, my stomach was now whole. Incredibly, I didn't need to breath!

There was a note, which I found rather amusing:

_I cannot stay, young man._

_My family must never know about this as we've sworn to remain reclusive, to protect our secret._

_I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to let you die._

_You will find that you're almost indestructible. That you have immense power and speed. That you crave the food of human vittles only. _

_If you do one thing for me, leave people alone. Nourishment is to be had in the animals of the forest. _

_Look after yourself, do not look for me,_

_Esme _

What the hell? A hillbilly Appalachian vampire? Jesus Christ! I needed some bootleg, never mind blood!

But my stomach roiled at the idea.

When I tried to fold the scrap of paper, it crumbled to linty dust in my fingertips. Then I began to understand the truth of her words.

I gagged at the thought of blood-food even while my throat turned to the ashes of a campfire, flamed and hungry for something warm, wet, thick, and rich-red running down it.

I can't say I never tried mortal stock, because I did. And it was fucking amazing! Addictive. Better than sex and alcohol combined on a weeklong bender!

For five years in fact I took humans at will, much more a beast than any creature I'd ever hunted.

Shaky, famished, I left the woods, left my death and my rebirth, and found myself at the white picket fence of a little rambling ranch. A small girl played with her baby doll and carriage in the backyard. Through the open window, the noxious scent of Sunday dinner roasting made my gut churn. The lass whetted my appetite.

At the door, a woman came out, her eyes sweeping the yard and stopping where I'd hidden behind a wide pine, maternally sensing danger, "Bella. Come inside and wash up, it's time for dinner and your father will be home soon."

The girl skipped and her long brown braids swayed, and they both disappeared into the house.

Instead of doing what I wanted, I did what Esme had asked of me and finally walked away.

Since then I'd reined in my bloodlust, I'd chanced across a few playmates of my own kind, I'd discovered I could even make love to human women so long as I wasn't too forceful. Absolutely there were slip-ups along my way; _I was only a vampire, after all._

I'd entered society and found myself fascinated with the times in which I lived, the full breadth of civilization. My enormity of power, my speed and unstoppable strength gave me hours of amusement! Sometimes I ran to Canada and back just for the feel of it, stopping along the way to crush a few boulders and bellow louder than thunder booms in the wilderness.

For a year I'd been in Detroit,, an interesting swing town. The automobile industry taking off, the hot rods, the women preening, the lights glowing, the music flowing…it was Motown at its finest!

The venue for tonight's sock hop was the Elk Lodge in Midtown. I doffed my head with a chuckle as I entered the claustrophobic cavern, a nod to all the elk meat I'd eaten.

Inside the disc jockey was spinning up Ray Bryant's _Madison Time._

A pastel whisper of taffeta and satin dresses, full knee-length skirts, stockings, wafting luxurious heady perfume, elegance and money, fun and cocktails greeted me.

I grinned and observed. Looking for a lady as I tapped my foot in time to the piano and escalating trumpet and soulful sax, the deep froggy bass.

Thank god sock hops were in name only now, all those clammy human feet in one hot enclosed place really fucked up my incredibly keen vampire olfactory senses.

_Back to the birdland and back to the Madison. Hit It!_

My black hair was swept back with one crest over my forehead, a sheen of Brilliantine keeping the jet crown intact.

Narrowing my eyes, there was one voluptuous broad who kept calling to me with her swivel of hips, her eyes closed to the sounds, her shoulders dipping, her chin thrusting to the rhythm. And her pelvis, _fuck me_!

_Now when I say hit it, I want big strong Cleveland Box and back to the Madison, Hit It!_

Each upbeat found her jerking her ample hips up out of a roll, her chest almost topped out of the low straight bodice. Yeah, she was a woman I could sink my fingers into, probably even my teeth if I weren't careful. Her luscious rump in the silky flared dress was more than a handful. Glamorous, busty, effortlessly beautiful, she was stylish with her claret lips and endless lashes, her high rotund cheeks that hinted upward with an inner smile of delight. Lost in the music, she acted on every nuance of melody, feeling it in her bones, not just acting it.

Blond hair, drizzled like from a honeycomb, was elaborate in shiny waves with row upon row of ripples , flaxen ocean currents, to the tops of her shoulders with not a strand out of place. She patted the curls as if sensing my gaze, and then ran her hands over the hourglass silhouette of her waist cinched in by a wide black sash accentuating her bust and hips.

_Now this time when I say hit it, I want the big strong Jackie__Gleason and back to the Madison. Hit It._

Creamy skin, round shoulders, the dimples at her elbows made me sigh just thinking about the divots of flesh sure to be found nestling above her full ass.

I fucking loved a woman who took pride in her appearance.

Keeping this goddess in my sights, I slinked my way across the varnished floor, beating the air with my pelvis, dipping my knees in tune, skimming feet until I made it to her in the front line.

_Walk on, you're lookin' good._

I gathered my share of looks. That was a given. I looked _damn_ good in my white shirt, the dark blue blazer and narrow tie that only made my chest appear more muscular, trousers pressed so the creases were as razor sharp as my startlingly white incisors, my wingtip Oxford's polished to a high glaze.

The jaunty beat thumped. A mournful clarinet deepened. The trumpet blared.

She pretended she wasn't paying attention as I neared, but I caught a sidelong glance beneath upswept lashes over eyes whose color remained a mystery to me.

Her skin was buffed to a glowing ivory patina.

But she wasn't perspiring.

Close enough now I could smell her spring-garden fragrance, suddenly aware that of all the bodies packed tight and sinuously writhing to the album, we were the only two that remained supernaturally pale and sweat free.

_What the hell?_

Her eyes were gold as mine!

An _imperfect_ immortal?

One made of plentiful flesh and splendidly Rubenesque stature?

The pin-up girl of my wet dreams was a vampire? This really was my lucky decade!

She started to sneer at my advance; I used my thick shoulders to shove a bevy of greasy soda jerks away so I could stand next to her in line as the song wound down.

_And hold it right there._

Hell yes I would.

The Stroll started up before I even had time to adjust my thoughts or my crotch.

It was low and dirty and humming hard.

Crooning, the sexy saxophone reeling up from an undertone to a hot exclamation, a climax with each refrain, I grabbed her hand, cold as mine, and walked her down the parted alley. Halfway, she turned me to her, grabbed my tie and bent back as she gyrated down to the ground, perfectly preternaturally balanced on the balls of her feet, the pointy heels of her black patent pumps lifting off the lacquered floor.

With a flourish of pelvic rotations, she made her way back up, wound my tie around her wrist like a leash and led me to the end of the line.

I'd sure as hell be sweating now if at all inhumanly possible.

We clapped as the song ended, parted by the gap of the dancing leeway, but I made to her straightaway, "Haven't seen you around here before, Doll. Are you new to Motor City?"

She battered her eyelashes and her cupid bow lips topped up into a smile, "You'll have to do better than that, Stud." Feisty and forthright!

I would have blushed for all my forty years, I stammered a bit and pressed the parquet with my sole, "How about this, Miss? I'm Emmett McCarty, pleased to meet you." I pushed every ounce of handsome into my smile so my dimples dug deep into my cheeks.

I was rewarded with her own flustered look before she returned with a pure uptilt of her lips, "I'm Rosie Hale, and I've seen you around, Emmett." Holding her hand aloft as if she were Mamie Eisenhower herself, Rosie's fingertips met my lips very softly.

At her ear, collecting her supremely gold painted locks back to her nape, I whispered:

_O my Luve's like a red, red rose  
That's newly sprung in June:  
O my Luve's like the melodie  
That's sweetly play'd in tune._

_As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,  
So deep in luve am I:  
And I will luve thee still, my dear,  
Till a' the seas gang dry:_

_Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,  
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;  
I will luve thee still, my dear,  
While the sands o' life shall run._

_And fare thee weel, my only Luve  
And fare thee weel, a while!  
And I will come again, my Luve,  
Tho' it were ten thousand mile._

I felt the full bodied indulgent flesh of her fine figure and a teasing kiss against my lips before Rosie leaned back, "Pretty words for a pretty boy, but why don't you ask me what you're really thinking?"

My eyes twinkled, and I raised one eyebrow before I twirled her out, causing the peach colored satin to sit up and open like an umbrella revealing a healthy length of her rich robust thighs. Coiling her back to me, clasping her with my forearm around her sturdy waist, I mirthfully questioned, "Did you come here alone?"

Her translucent laughter rang up to the rafters, like the bells of St. Joseph Catholic Church. Rosie pushed me away with the toughness she was blessed with so I nearly stumbled. "Please, Emmett," she braced a palm to my chest, walking me backward, sashaying forward with a sinful roll of her hips, "Aren't you the least bit curious about a full-figured vampire? One might even describe me as…_imperfect_."

When she laid those _imperfect_ plentiful tits to my torso that was the last thing on my mind! I was just counting my blessings and trying not to tug her further back into the darkened alcove so I could feel just how satisfyingly curved her ass would be seated in my hands.

"Tut, tut, tut," Rosie walked her fingertips with each utterance up to my collar, opening the first button, running her whole palm into the gap where the muscles at the base of my throat constricted and strained.

Lifting up to her toes, her body crushed against mine, our two implacable forms colliding like glaciers, she whispered in my ear, tucking a couple fingers into the neck of my white undershirt, "I do believe I'm the only vampire with _proper womanly proportions_," I shuddered and bit down on the moan revolving about my tongue. Her pelvis undulated against my groin.

The carmine of her lips mesmerized me so I could barely hear her words, "It was supposed to be a curse, actually. My _just desserts_, so to speak, for being such a vain and haughty human being."

I met her mouth with much more tenderness than the pounding arousal that sloped inside of me, moving my lips over hers just to feel the taste of the red and the camber against mine.

"I wouldn't call it a curse, more like a miracle," I whispered roughly when our kiss ended.

"That's what I think," Rosie returned with a wink and a grin!

I laughed loudly, didn't seem she'd changed all that much from the narcissistic human she claimed to have been, but I sure as Hell wasn't complaining!

Captivated, clamorous, I was just about to feast on those lips again when a tiny young lady bumbled into us, aptly highlighting the difference between girl and woman.

A shout from across the dancehall – _Alice, over here!_ -- drenched out Rosie's quiet snide comment, "Girl, I'm just this side of hungry so you better get your skinny ass away from me, pronto!"

The timber framed windows shook with my laughter! Yeah, she was definitely my kind of woman; a sarcastic sense of humor and a smart mouth too? My non-heart jitterbugged in my chest and my erection worked its towering way up beneath the placket of my trousers.

Fanning herself with her clutch, Rosie grumbled again, "Broad probably wears falsies too. And dammit, I really _am_ thirsty!"

Prodding my monogrammed silver flask from my pocket, fighting with my shaft to get it out of the tight space, I unscrewed the cap and offered it to Rosie. Unfortunately, the temperature of the blood was less than appetizing. I looked to Rosie's cleavage, the deep dip between her two swelling porcelain hills; if she were mortal I wouldn't have thought twice about pushing the container into the crevasse to warm the crimson drops to room temperature.

As it was, I ended up ogling her as she tipped back the drink, imagining something else, also cold and very rigid, between her resplendent tits.

_Roll over and listen to a little of this._

Chuck Berry's _Roll Over Beethoven _shouted out of the speakers and the dancers crammed onto the dance floor. I drew Rosie with me to the middle of the mash. We hand jived and kicked up our heels with the rest of them, all the while I thought of hand jobs and kicking up her skirt with the pointed toe of my wingtips while she whirled around with a sexy twist.

I grabbed her rump and ground against her as the music crashed, "Rosie, baby, you'd be surprised how many vampires like a big girl. More to hold on to!"

She winked those thick long eyelashes at me and excitement pinged around my body like a marble ricocheting off the insides of a pinball machine, complete with lights flashing and bells pealing, "Honey, you don't have to tell me. I think you'll find I'm more than a handful."

While the others caught their breaths and shouted above the din to each other, I linked my fingers with this big, bold, beautiful, brash woman, "Wanna' blow this joint?"

She nodded and we made our way outside, a light stole over the crescent globes of her shoulders. My hand at her back with my fingers negligently stroking the topmost mounds of her derriere, I said it without thinking, "Baby, I love your ass."

"I heard that, Emmett."

Strolling with her across the parking lot, we halted at the side of my shiny Cadillac Convertible Coupe 6267.

Rosie patted the sleek hood in appreciation, one fine dame acknowledging another.

I opened the door of my sharp-finned ride, the glossy paint as red as her lips, and settled Rosie inside, watching her flush skirt rise up her striking thighs as she crossed her legs and pulled a chiffon scarf out of thin air to wrap around her hair so she truly did resemble a silver screen starlet.

Sprinting to the other side, I showboated and jumped over the closed door, winking at Rosie and gunning the engine. Her net petticoat rustled sweetly against the cream leather seats that crackled and gave.

The jaunty tune of _Why Do Fools Fall in Love_ fizzled through the radio when Rosie turned the dial. and we floated down Detroit's Davison Freeway with the top down and the V-8 revving.

_Why do fools fall in love?_

_

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_

~Thoughts on Motownmett?~

**Ha ha ha, there was a really funny mistake in there...I hope you laughed if you saw it before Vi did and before I could fix it!**

Thanks for all the feedback, I'm trying to stay caught up with y'all . And I really wasn't kidding about every-other-day updates, though we'll take a break for turkey feasting.

Don't know if I've mentioned, but Eddie and I both tweet, you can find the links on my profile. And there's an amazingly verbose, witty, funny, and sexy-bawdy group of women I get to hang with on the Dead Confederates thread. Nine times out of ten, we aren't talking about DC's. Y'all are welcome to come say hi!

The poem is _My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose_, by Robert Burns

**Hang onto your seats, darlings, the final four starts Wednesday.**

**Rie~**


	22. Walls

The Twilight Twenty-Five  
Prompt: 23. Walls  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: Edward/Jasper  
Rating: M (MEN, MEN, MEN)

**Viola**, _pussycat_, I know you wanted to keep these men between the two of us, but ladies have been very patient, so I think we should share. _Heart of Gold_ was all you, of course, and it's perfection.

**Disclaimer: **The men, the mountains, the masculine ruggedness? Ours. The rest? Hers.

~~This goes with _Wood_. Who remembers that luscious slash tale? Jasper as a vampire, Edward as his human lover? Written at the request of one of my favorite women, **C-Me-Smile (Begin Again is her fic, and she frickin'owns me!) **And thanks to **pixiekat** for those VF images that set this all in motion!~~

**Hold on to your seats, socks, panties and tissues…the Final Four starts now.**

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**Walls**

Circa 2006

Charleston, SC and Asheville, NC

Edward

I knew something was amiss with Jasper. It was vivid and clear as a summer day at Folly Beach! The way he talked, with a lilt of timeworn accent and jargon of the past, and his movements entirely too graceful, sometimes way too damn fast, he was more than just different. He was unique and…something antiquated_._

The man never slipped or tripped apart from the one time I had to pull him from the onslaught of oncoming traffic, and that just wasn't natural! The hurricane force that hit my hand clenched to his forearm in that instant, when I'd had to hoist him up to the curb with a mighty heave as if he weighed more than a frigate at sea, _yeah, something was off._

Within six months of pressing my attentions on him, damn near stalking the man until he accepted my request for a date, I'd moved in with him. Under this close proximity, there was no way in hot-hell I could deny the oddity of his behavior.

Unsleeping but always looking replenished; Jasper's nocturnal waking had nothing to do with insomnia. He was like a possum, but he didn't sleep during the day either. He was fucking cold, _ice cold_, like he'd stood in front of the A/C vent for about four hours. Bad circulation was one thing, and this wasn't it!

And _Sweet Momma Brown_, the man could _fuck_! All day _and _all night without rest. Whereas I woke up with morningwood, Jasper walked about with perma-wood. I had a healthy libido, but his was superlative! Jesus, he could give Cialis a run for its money!

Between the coolness, the elegance, the huge dick that never needed to recover from a fuck, there was one other clue to his otherness; Jasper didn't eat a lick of food. And I knew goddamn well the man wasn't suffering an eating disorder, he was built like a brick shit house, brawny of shoulder, lean of hip, sliced across his back and chest and abs with fucking welts of muscle. And his thighs, _oh my fucking lord, _his thighs were carved goodness.

No, I knew there was nothing wrong with his appetite, I just couldn't figure out how he sated it.

I didn't want to push him overtly, so I did it in a more secretive manner. I liked to yawn a lot, pull him with me to the bed for a mid-afternoon romp and then a nap. I fell to slumber with a satisfied smile while he feigned sleep. I felt his agitated huffing against my back, restless and not a bit tired.

I really liked to fuck with Jasper via the eggs. Each morning I slid a bigger plateful across to him, hiding my laughter as I watched his gold eyes pop from his head.

_Gold eyes._

That was another thing. He didn't even wear contacts! Like melted caramel, the crisped crust of crème brulee, his eyes were wide and pale and bright and _gold._

I made him black-eyed susan's for breakfast. A nice globe of yoke nestled in a perfect circle I'd cut into the middle of the toast.

Jasper retched.

He pushed the plate aside with a long groan that turned into a sigh and found him sifting his long powdery fingers through his curls.

I looked down, this was breaking point.

When he told me, "I'm a vampire, Edward," I blanched but kept my head lowered, mechanically eating my food, reaching across the table to grab his hand and caress the snowcaps of his knuckles.

Knowing something was different about my man, I'd never expected this.

But then again, why the hell not? In a town filled with old time bad-doings, serial killers, an overflowing insane asylum in the1800's, ghosts, phantoms of pirates, lynch mobs and marketplace hangings to jeering mobs…_why not this?_

The most haunted city in the United States. Why not a vampire to add to its morbid appeal?

I bit back an ironic laugh.

Swallowed my instant fear and wrenching shock, because to be different was one thing, to be a vampire was a whole damn different kettle of fish!

Jasper held onto my hand like a man drowning. When I met his eyes, they were flooded with such wariness, hurt, suspicion and indecision, I had to let him know, I _had_ to be braver and stronger than this immortal person sitting in my kitchen, this creature who had shared my bed and snared my heart. I linked our fingers and eased the muscles around my mouth to form a smile, "Really? I'd imagined worse, Jasper," and I winked at him, pushing down the eggs that hovered in my throat, wanting to come back up.

I didn't want to scare him away with my shock.

For that day we went on as if nothing had transpired. When we made love, and it was _love_, I marveled at the strength of his flesh I'd never comprehended. When he came inside of my ass, I nearly fainted for all it meant!

Huddling into his body, the moon and her stars winked at me, a constellation of good fortune. Snuggling deeper to his implacable form, I whispered, "I love you, Jasper."

He jostled against me slightly, "We need to talk, Edward."

Sinking beneath those words, my dreams were a jumbled mess of me and him; humans, beasts, and flesh and flashes of all the things I wondered if I'd ever understand.

In the morning, I pulled myself together. I knew I was as white as Jasper, so I didn't shave and slapped my cheeks a few times to bring them back to their normal flush. Gathering my thoughts, hiding in the bathroom, I heard Jasper in the kitchen, making coffee, cracking eggs, the pop of the toaster. And I smiled, because this man-monster who I knew I loved, who I knew loved me with every essence of whatever he was, was making me breakfast!

_Fucked up world._

I mouthed to myself in the mirror, "Edward, would you change any of this? Would you have rather not met Jasper?"

My echo, my mirror image shook his disheveled head.

_No fucking way_.

I sat at the table, and Jasper served me, for a change.

The coffee tasted like burnt black shit. The toast was charred to a crisp so the butter made creamy hills amongst the cold flint. The eggs. _Oh the eggs!_ Yes, the yolk was runny, but the whites were too. I thought I heard a mother hen clucking in the distance.

I fucking ate it all and said a prayer against salmonella.

And I thanked my man with a kiss over the table and my cleaned plate.

We adjourned to the living room. The floor-to-ceiling windows allowed hazy humid sunshine in, heating me and not touching Jasper's skin. A sprinkle of dust glittered behind him when he sat down, the fashioning of glowing angel's wings at his back.

He was no demon.

I put on my glasses, pulled out my notes, and started with a dry throat. Fumbling and stupid, I commenced with the most inane and inappropriate questions born of too many superstitions and bad horror flicks, "How can you go about in daylight, what do you eat, _where's your casket?_"

A deep rumble of laughter undulated out of Jasper and he splayed his legs wider, his head back, a grin on his face…he looked like he did when we'd just fucked.

He answered every query, but stilled and turned serious with my unending barrage, "How long have you been alive, have you ever killed a human, _why me?_"

Sitting forward, his elbows to his knees and his chin on his steepled fingers, Jasper looked straight at me, his eyes turning from Klondike to steely black and his mouth firm, "I was born in 1843. I was turned in 1863. I'm twenty years old, _younger than you and forever older._ I have not only killed humans, but have slaughtered hundreds, I've drunk their blood as the fantastical devil I am. I haven't touched a civilian in that manner for fifty-six years."

He shook his head, and the motes behind him now subdued by the setting sun settled like broken wings, "_Why you?_ I don't fucking know, Edward. Why me?"

I blushed and swallowed thick mucus. Gripping the arms of my chair, I sat up and braced myself, "Because, it was inevitable, Jasper." I leaned forward and our knees touched, our hands dangling inches apart, "I don't really care what you are. You," I grabbed his cleft chin in my palm and made him look at me, "are my lover. My man. You, Jasper Whitlock, are my fucking love!"

And he was. The hairs at the nape of my neck had sat down. My cock had jerked up.

I remembered him, that first instance.

_A fuckin' tourist trying to filch my ride. Assholes needed to stick to bicycles and carriage rides. This was my city, and I had places to be._

_A boy no less._

_I knocked him sideways and grabbed the taxi door handle, but then saw the awe on his face, heard the blare of a horn as a half-ton Chevy barreled towards him on the narrow cobbled byway. _

_Yanking him up, I lowered myself enough to share the ride._

_And then I looked at him more closely. In the enclosed space, like a heated smoky envelope, there was a current running between us. My polar opposite, he was slightly shorter, a bit rougher hewn, heavily muscled through his chest and shoulders. His hair was wild as mine but longer, wavy and blond. There was no blight, blemish or stubble on his face, and his cheeks were high with deep dimples when he smiled shyly at me with the plumpest pink lips._

_That glorious sensual smile was the end of me, the start of us._

_I certainly would have remembered him. Fuck's sure I hadn't seen him at The Pantheon, not that the cram-packed club was my scene, but, when needs must, sometimes anything would do in a pinch._

_This man here was not a pinch hitter._

_Not by a longshot._

_The cabbie dropped him off first, I memorized his address. A wealthy street in the French Quarter just over from historic, iron balustraded Dock Street Theater. There were giant magnolias in his scant front square spilling huge glossy white flowers and a lemon-sweet fragrance._

_Petals dropped down in the midday sun._

_I went back to his house. I cajoled and teased and tested him. I put on my best smiles and smirks and grins, my most appealing clothes and plied him with compliments and little found gifts like a posy of wild roses, a tome I'd gotten for one dollar at Pope's Antiques on King Street._

_He'd tried, gently, to put me off. Blinded, I wouldn't be swayed. If I'd known the truth then, would I have run?_

Now, I didn't know.

Then I'd just seen Jasper as a mysterious young man who was obtuse and singular and withheld. Somehow both strong and shy. I fell in love with his spirit as much as his grace and saturnine stature.

Now I understood it all. Two centuries old and then some, he'd shunned companionship for so fucking long!

_Now_ it all made perfect sense. And I believed I could take him, have him, as mine, as vampire and a man.

The truth outted. For two days we wrestled with who he was and what I'd thought he'd been.

In his time, an astute follower of economical trends, Jasper had amassed wealth that kept rolling over. Never had he flaunted his good fortune, because it wasn't that at all really. At least not to him. He was neither lucky nor blessed, he claimed.

Instead he was cursed and blighted.

Spare time he had, boredom was a disease of the mind. In full battle mode, certainly not one to roll over and play dead, Jasper volunteered. It was his way of repenting, for the horrific blood spilling and violently brutal murders he'd committed under the thumb of Maria, his dam.

He never once promised it wouldn't happen again. He never claimed to be rehabilitated beyond reproach. In that manner, Jasper was human as the rest of us.

He understood his boundaries, his imperfections, the instincts bred into his empty veins and cold fortified bones. Like Fort Moultrie he'd made a fifty-year stand against all of his cruel impulses, but, _he thought,_ the fortress he shielded himself with could crumble with one scent.

Contact was what he craved, more than the blood of people. Simple human kindness, and to give back. In his charity work, he could have easily written a check, become a benefactor of one charity or another (and he did do that), but he walked among the populace a living man, and worked at Crisis Ministries, the Lowcountry Food Bank, Habitat for Humanity…to see, meet, talk and know _people._

Courageously, he inured himself to the fragrance of human fodder, and even made friends!

How the hell could I ever doubt him? This gilded angel, this devil-cherub? This Phoenix?

More perplexed and befuddled than I, Jasper proposed an evening walk. We went to the Battery and White Point Gardens. The sea boomed against the stronghold, keeping the shore away from the millionaire's antebellum mansions.

Ornery, obviously pissed off, Jasper broke from my grasp and stormed ahead.

Catching up with him in the gazebo, Indian summer mosquitoes buzzing about me, I heard his dirty self-denying laugh and hated it, hated him, "I think you need some time to yourself, Edward. To process all this," Jasper swung his arm out to the Atlantic as if his spirit resided there, instead of in my heart, and in his soul.

My temper flared, "Fuck! You really think I never guessed something was unusual about you, Jasper? You think I stayed with you to have you fob me off at the very first difficulty?" I spat saliva to the white boards at our feet, I was so fucking furious with him! I'd tamed my fright, eaten my dismay, killed my horror because I loved him!

I stalked to him, I'd always been the hunter in this relationship, "I've already processed _this._"

I grabbed his neck and pulled him to my mouth, grinding out, "Don't you fucking pussyfoot around with me, Jasper. If you want to leave then you tell me straight out."

Levity rose and Jasper laughed as he unleashed my tenuous hold with no exertion, "There's nothing _pussy_ about me, as you well know," he declared as he set me apart.

"No, but there's something decidedly manly and feline," I countered, stepping close again, softening my voice, lowering my tone.

Jasper rallied, "Don't toy with me, Edward. You're being fucking naïve, and you know it!"

He turned his back and made is if to vault over the rail, but I called him with my hands squeezing his chest, my face to his spine, "I. Don't. Care. Jasper, I don't fucking care!"

I sank my hips to his ass and ran my clothed cock up the seam of his pants.

His head lolled forward and his arms bent, his knees gave way and he turned to me with a honey smile, "Are you just trying to get a rise out of me?"

With his huge sundown eyes pure with innocence, trust and lust, his wide mouth fighting a smile, Jasper waited my pronouncement.

I dipped forward and ground my shaft to his, "Looks like I already did, baby."

I placed my tongue to the cleft of his chin, lapping it.

Jasper pulled me to him by my ears that were flushed red with want, kissing me with his firm full lips, plum, plush and pouty under mine. My mouth was mobile, straight, crisp and firm, his pink, mine deep like wine, as if I were the vampire in this relationship.

Our breaths caught, our jeans snagged and he pushed me away, "You don't know what you're asking for, Edward."

The steam of our lagged breaths fumed to the still autumn air, a group of girls giggled and lingered on the steps on the pavilion.

My forehead to his, rubbing his mouth with my fingers, I'd never let him go, "Then show me, Jasper."

Full of shame, reliving, _I knew_, his rampant past, Jasper steadied himself and shunned me, "I'm so in love with you! This has been a gift, Edward. _You are a blessing!_ I've stolen too much of you already. I want you to be free. And it's fucking killing me to say this," his longing eyes were craving the liquid of tears as they foundered to mind, "but you have a choice to make. I don't deserve your love. I've done nothing to warrant your devotion." I pounded his chest, only serving to bruise my fists, shaking my head in denial of whatever he might say next!

Fisticuffs to my wrists, he stopped my battering and exhaled his spellbinding air over me, "You don't know what I am! You've accepted the word, you think you understand, but you haven't _seen me._"

I struggled and raged, my jaw clenched, and my green eyes were pitchforks of fury, "Then you show me, Jasper! _You man up and show me!_ Because I 'm not fucking leaving you!"

His eyes softened, melted. His fingers relented, stroked. His arms tugged and hugged me, "Okay, Edward. Okay. We'll go away together. Then you'll know."

_~~ll~~_

Our cabin was secluded. Way the fuck off the beaten path. Up near the treeline on a craggy mountain fifteen minutes from downtown Asheville and a long, twisty, snakeback precarious drive in first gear. It was cold as Jasper's cock up this high, so I made good use of the cast iron fireplace that sat kitty corner in the main room, melting the skittery frost from the enormous window panes in the cathedral ceilinged space.

I still didn't know what to think, but I knew I wanted to stay with Jasper, and I'd do everything in my limited human power to keep him as my lover.

Blanketed in white, and peace, and quiet, I willfully shut down my over-reaching mind.

I slid open the door, walked around the rustic wrap porch and sat down in one of the tomato red Adirondack chairs, folding a soft woolen throw around my legs.

The light up here was close to God. Luminous, rarified, unbreathed, untouched. Trees scattered down the near-sheer mountain face, stumbling amongst rocks and ragged outcroppings. Not a sound heard, not a person seen.

Into my bucolic reverie, a vision I could never have fathomed just two weeks ago gracefully loped toward me. I sat up straighter, and the unsettled feeling in my body scratched like the itchy braids of my cableknit sweater.

The charming sly smile on his face jarred with the fact Jasper was alternately leaping and running from giant stone to stone, sending small landsides crashing down the cliff…_with a struggling 7-point buck laid across his wide shoulders_. Even more disquieting, each foot speedily placed _cracked_ into the cotton-hush of the air. Even more alarming, the buck was still alive.

Stopping about ten yards away, Jasper heaved the mewling animal with little more than a flex of his arms to a flat-topped boulder with an almighty _THWACK!_ The tortured braying stopped, but its eyes still registered with life. He was merely stunned into silence; perhaps Jasper had severed his spine.

Sinisterly, Jasper heard my shocked gasp and smirked at me, his eyes black as purgatory, "Hungry, honey?"

I'm sure I paled, I tried not to cringe. I licked my lips and swallowed though my mouth was dry as if I had an epic hangover. Understanding, finally, this was no fucking joke, vampires _were real,_ my lover was one and he consumed blood, my booted feet hit the timbers of the porch heavily, and I pitched forward, trying not to heave up the apple I'd just eaten. With a whisper, he could hear every mutter and mumble of mine I know knew, I begged, "Please, Jasper, put him out of his misery."

Baring his throat, toned and stretched with muscle, Jasper laughed, "Can't, honey. I like my blood fresh, still pumping. I'll be gentle though." Lethal, his voice was velvety with murderous intent.

I knew he was showing me this for a reason, testing my mettle and resolve.

Holding the buck extended and ready, his hands were manacles, those gentle gifts that had been all over my body in the most loving, most sexy way. His teeth when he grinned at me and then smiled tenderly at the deer glinted like razors and were weapons. Teeth I'd touched with my tongue and that had nibbled my nipples, my ribs, run up and down my cock were now slicing through a ribbon of flesh with a sucking, tissue-separating squelch.

It wasn't as grisly as I'd feared. Hypnotized by Jasper leaning over the deer like I'd felt him pressing into me, _like a lover_, he stroked the bristly hide and nuzzled the opened artery, slurps and moans and quiet sucking interspersed. Unnerved, intrigued and enthralled, I couldn't tear my eyes away. My own heart pounded up so my blood flooded my ears. As he neared the end of his long drink, Jasper used one hand to snap the beast's neck with a _CRACK_ that echoed down the mountainside, putting an end to its life.

It wasn't repugnant. Jasper's eating from this animal was beautifully macabre, a twisted tantalizing tableau.

Just as I did when I finished a meal, Jasper wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve and sat back on his haunches. There was no glee or wickedness anymore, only fear when he looked up to me. I'd already started down the steps, one foot on the forest floor, one hand extended to him.

"Do I scare you?"

"Not exactly," but I wasn't smirking. I acknowledged the gravity of his life and what it impelled him to do. As I walked on sluggish feet to Jasper, he shook his head and jumped away, turned his back. I didn't want to pursue this predator so I stilled. "There's always been a darkness in you I now understand. I think your lightness outshines it, but without the frightening magic inside of you, there'd be no such dawn." I stood tall and squared my shoulders, "No, I'm not scared of you, baby."

Jasper turned and spat, "How can you call me baby after that?" He swept his arm out to the dead steaming carcass beside him. "You know what, Edward. I think you should be scared as fuck! Maybe if you saw me murder a human?"

"Jasper! _NO!_ I know you've killed in the past, that it's taken decades and a strength of will I'll never be able to match to get beyond that! So, how can you deny the power of your spirit? How can you stand there and fucking tell my I should run from you? You may be a vampire, you may have consumed innocents, something I'll never understand, but you've come out as a man. _My man! _ _We're all fallible."_

He tugged at his curls, glared at the buck-corpse, looked at me and away. His slumped shoulders rose slowly, his hands fell away eventually, his eyes lifted, fossilized amber again.

I stood my ground as he came to me, bearing proud again. _My man, my vampire, my everything._ He smelled musky and like iron. His hands cradled my face, and I pushed against him. He put his lips, big and cushiony, against my ear so I could clearly hear the smirk in his voice, "I know what you're thinking, honey. Don't worry, I'll brush my teeth before I kiss you."

I laughed so hard, with such relief tears were running down my face as I staggered back to the cabin. _He wasn't wrong._

Jasper remained at the slab-rock, claiming he needed to take care of the animal so as not to attract bears. Ahead of me as I climbed the stairs, a brown paper parcel landed on the porch. Jasper had lobbed the package up and was ginning like a fucking in love fool when I looked behind to him.

He raised one eyebrow and silently ushered me forward.

Inside? Two live lobsters trying to scale the crackling package, scrabbling, claws clacking.

Disbelief riddled me, "Where the hell did you get these?" I shouted across the woods, forgetting I didn't need to raise my voice in my surprise.

Winking, Jasper hefted the dead weight back to his shoulders, "Just took a run to the coast, honey. You're gonna' get hungry sometime, and I can't wait to watch you with melted butter rimming your lips."

_Oh, fuck me._

An hour later, I'd taken the ax out of the chopblock and split a few armloads of wood, I'd warmed up fireside and made a cup of cocoa to bring with me to the deck.

I heard the whoosh of the sliding door and turned in my chair. My hair was rumpled, I'd changed into a red and black checkered flannel shirt and clean jeans and pulled my chair up to the outdoor heater on the splintery timbered porch.

Raising my eyes from my book, all the air left my body in a huge rush. _Fuck me now._

Fresh from a shower, Jasper's smell combined subtly with the loamy cedar fragrance of the forest; he made me more dizzy than the spin-drop of the overhang we perched atop.

Towel drying damp burnished locks, his jeans practically dripping off his lean hips, boot flaps open and unlaced, shirtless – _Jesus H. Christ! --_ he gave me vertigo.

Him and his fucking lazy smile, how could he look so human and be so goddamn manly, and still hold the supreme gift of the ethereal locked in his body?

It was my turn to play, I fucking deserved it, I'd worked for this. I leaned easily and pulled my harmonica from my back pocket, ensuring my grassy eyes were languid, weighty with all the wantonness that pounded through me. Low and rough, I spoke, "You know, baby, I love my harmonica, the way it feels to _blow_ and _suck_, making the metal slick with my saliva and running it up and down my lips. Ain't nothin' better, _almost._"

His toweling off stopped, he threw the terry cloth to the glass door with a wet smack. His fists clenched. And his shirtless chest began to rise and fall with quick unnecessary breaths.

Fueled like the blaze inside by his erotic reaction, I continued, even lower and more gravelly of tone, "But I love another _organ_ in my _mouth_ even more."

I pulled the instrument to my lips and let loose with the slow sexy tune, _Heart of Gold_, the metal whispering across the stubble atop my lip where I hadn't shaved in days.

Between refrains, I sang:

_I want to live,  
I want to give  
I've been a miner  
for a heart of gold.  
It's these expressions  
I never give  
That keep me searching  
for a heart of gold  
And I'm getting old._

_I've been to Hollywood  
I've been to Redwood  
I crossed the ocean  
for a heart of gold  
I've been in my mind,  
it's such a fine line  
That keeps me searching  
for a heart of gold._

Striding to me, Jasper didn't let me finish the song. Sitting astride me, he pulled the harmonica from my lips and replaced it with his own, with a gut-deep growl. I ripped my hands into his hair and ground up against him, my hands rippled over his hard-as-ice pecs, pinching nipples, knuckling his belly button, and I yanked open both our top buttons so our pubic hair rasped and tangled together. I groaned into Jasper's lips, he suckled and licked my tongue. He grabbed my ass and pulled me off the seat of the chair and straight up to his erection, "FUCK, Edward!"

We were panting and starving and so fucking needy. I pushed my fingers into the opened flap of his jeans, but before I could reach his dick Jasper pulled my hand up and held it above my head. Replacing our lush deep plundering kiss with little bites, he anchored me, "You need to eat, honey."

"Shit!"

Lifting himself off me, Jasper jokingly berated, "Now, now, Edward, that's no way to speak to your elder ."

I threw my book at his fucking gorgeous tight retreating ass. How the hell could he just walk away from _that_? Oh yeah, without doubt, the man had paranormal abilities.

He returned with a huge tray piled with bright red lobster, a bowl of clarified butter, and a frosty mug of beer. Pulling up a chair, Jasper placed the platter next to him on the seat.

_This was gonna' be good._

Trying to wipe the smile from his mouth, Jasper took up a lobster, rolled off the mint-green rubber band as if he were rolling a condom onto his cock, and smoldered out, "I like to eat al fresco, Edward."

"Yeah, I'd noticed that, baby. And I like to fuck _al fresco_, so I guess that makes us even." It was my turn to watch Jasper gulp furiously.

"Crackers?" I asked.

He cracked his knuckles.

"Bib?"

He bit his lip and then ran his tongue down my throat, "I'd be happy to clean up any mess, honey."

True to his word, Jasper tore open a claw and pulled the red-speckled flesh out, keeping it intact.

Opening my mouth, I felt first the drizzle of warm butter running over my lips and then the plop of meaty sweet flesh to my tongue. Chewing, savoring, closing my eyes and moaning at the rich taste, all I could think of was Jasper's cock in my mouth and the honey drench of his cum all down my throat!

His fingers were greasy, as if he'd dipped them into a bottle of lube. Rubbing them over my lips, he compelled me to open again for another juicy fat morsel, and this time when I groaned and frowned at the delicious flavor, Jasper held his palm to my throat, feeling me swallow.

At the tail, when I'd sucked the sinewy little strings of tissue from each leg joint, I shoved his hands aside, "Allow me."

Smiling indolently, I pushed two fingers into the shell, working the rubbery creamy muscle from bottom to top. I winked at Jasper as I took hold of the opening ends of lobster and pulled out the best bit in one piece. Dipping it into the mug of butter, I slowly lowered it to my mouth and ate it, one section at time.

"Jesus fuck, Edward!" Jasper exhaled. I licked my fingers and then placed them into his mouth.

There was more I needed to say. While he was distracted, I found the courage, "I admire you."

Jasper sat back and braided his fingers through mine so they stuck together.

"I love and respect you."

He shook his head and looked aside.

I took his chin in hand and watched his eyes glimmer through sunset to midnight, "You _do_ scare me."

Wide and just like a boy, his brow furrowed and his lips pouted, and he could have broken away.

"I'm fucking petrified you'll leave me, Jasper."

With a crash, the remaining lobster, the platter, the stein fell to the planks, and I was in his arms, his hands like metal bands around my back, "Even though I'm technically dead, Edward, _I've never felt this alive!_"

"_Good_. Now that the human's been fed, there's something I want to try."

I stood and scooted the wooden chair back. Chuckling when his eyes grew huge and then tight with lust, I disrobed. Pushing off the cover of the Jacuzzi, I beckoned Jasper, lowering myself to the bubbling water as filigreed snowflakes began to fall.

Shucking out of his boots and jeans, Jasper hesitantly joined me. Clouds of steam billowed, a sizzle and pop sounded from his skin meeting the heated water, and he fell back into the convex seat, "Oh my god, this is heavenly! We're getting a fucking hottub!"

My feet rasped against his thighs and then stole to his crotch where the gorgeous shape of him was ridged and warmed.

"_Oh fuck, honey!_" Jasper's head met the surround. His voluptuous voice enveloped me with want.

I stood, dripping heat, beginning to shiver with cold, "Come."

Hand in hand we ran like kids through the sparkling black night indoors. Falling to the looped rug in front of the roaring fire, damp and longing, I brought his lips to mine, and all laughing ceased.

_Please just save me from this darkness._

It was as if he spoke. But he hadn't.

Jasper was inside my life.

Between his legs that I stroked open, I sank. Four days of bearded growth rubbed his thighs, up and down until he jumped and belted beneath me. My chapped lips pursed, and I pulled his erection in, and it was more luxurious than anything I'd ever tasted!

He knotted his hands into my moist hair and wrenched me away. His cock was saturated with venom and a deep purple color, beating pulsing veins wrapped it like satin ribbons, a birthday present.

I wanted it in me.

The shadow-light of the fire was hot and hellish and heavenly.

Sweat on my back ran into the cooled drops from the Jacuzzi. I shivered with passion, _never fear._

Jasper took me, turned me to my stomach.

My shaft was down between my legs, nestling neatly in my balls. He spread me wide and reached up to the juncture, a tincture of cum crawled onto his fingers as he handled my full-to-bursting head! Using it as ointment, Jasper ran two straight long fingers around my plush peach balls, rolling them and then strolling back to my ass.

I lifted to my elbows, my forehead met the rug, my bottom reared up! "_Oh fuck! Please. Please, please!"_

In reverse, over my shoulder, I watched Jasper roll a condom over his thick dappled blue cock, plying lube to his muscle and my bum.

"Now, _Jasper baby, Now!_"

I sank to the floor as he sank into me. Pulling up my hips, he opened my ass and gave it to me. Long slow sure lunges that made me bite my lips until blood was drawn and I knocked my clinched fists to the rug helplessly!

Like the butter before, Jasper strolled his hand over the sweat gathering in the base of my back, making a slick hot work of me.

Then he held my hips, tilted to a new angle, thrust twice mightily so my face and chest were plastered to the floorboards!

_Oh fuck. Jesus FUCK fuck fuck FUCK YES!_

Bowed over me, Jasper gasped with me.

He didn't need to breath.

I smiled, my face smashed to wood.

Reaching up, behind, I was rewarded with a kiss to my shoulder, spun around, lifted up, taken to bed.

_I love you._

I was exhausted. From the love, from the worry, the threatand collision of supernatural terror with humane awe! I knew it now.

Sleepily ingesting all the day had brought me, I understood it _now_. It wasn't glamorous. Jasper really was a beast inside of a man's body, and his battle was very fucking real.

Dreams waited.

Sleep denied me.

I wanted to be with Jasper forever. Even if it meant my death and rebirth as a vampire. The price of mortality was too dear.

I did understand Jasper, finally.

And all I knew was love, thoroughly.

I put my lips to his throat while he held me into sleep, mumbling quietly, "I want to be with you, Jasper. Not just for this life, while I age and you remain unchanged. I want to be with you, Jasper, _for the rest of our life._"

I had my heart of gold.

* * *

~And now, let us all give thanks for these gorgeous men~

Hi. Y'all own me. Inside and out. Perhaps this twist was unexpected after the carefree nature of Wood? Let me know what you think, please…you ladies keep me going.

_Heart of Gold, _Neil Young is the song. Listen on Youtube if you get the chance.

There's a tiny bit from _You're All I Have_, by Snow Patrol in there: _There is a darkness deep in you, a frightening magic I cling to._ Also, their _Make This Go On Forever. _ "Please just save me from this darkness."

Twilight 25 Voting Information:

December 1st through December 15th

**You will need to be a member of the community to vote.**

VOTING PROCESS:

Voting will be open to members of the community only & will be posted to the community on December 1st, 2009. You will have until December 15th to vote for your top three favorites for each prompt. From there it goes to the judges.

Community(DOT)livejournal(DOT)com/the twilight25/

**I'll post the links, etc, on my profile when I get around to it…tomorrow?**

**xoxoxo to your awesomeness, Rie~  
**


	23. Vivid

**The Twilight Twenty-Five  
**Prompt: 21. Vivid  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: Edward/Bella  
Rating: M

**Viola**, how can I thank you? For this alone, you provided the Longfellow with ease, which was no small feat. Much love and huge kisses to you!

**Disclaimer: **Twilight and all that other stuff belongs to Miss SM. This little story and twist on the tale is mine.

~~This is the accompaniment to _Mirror. _How can there be more to that story? Just read. For my lovely **amerymarie**~~

* * *

**Vivid**

Circa 2066

Forks, Washington

Edward

It was the opposite of vivid, the way Bella's corporeal body burned out, sizzling like the flame of a candle between two moist fingertips. Her incandescent soul remained faintly, flickering wisps of smoke from an extinguished wick.

I would follow Bella, leave this earth, traipse across blacked out space that was the immediate stopping of existence before I found her, from icy-cold death to sun-filled meeting.

I carried her to our bed, holding her tenderly one last time before arranging her arms, her legs, smoothing out her hair just so. Though I still observed her body with the keen eyes of a husband, the dearth of Bella within it was obscenely distressing. Even having prepared for this moment, her utter lack of existence made a fallen man of me!

Racked by pain that had no tangible beginning or end, eaten by the resurgence of guilt that I could have stopped this all, ceased her aging, thrown a blow to her ever dying just by turning Bella into vampire!

Gagging at the thought, I sobbed tearlessly into my hands, in danger of digging my fingers through the compressed caverns of my cheeks. My open mouth made a scream, but no sound emerged. Instead it sat huge like penance in my throat, a thing I attempted to retch out.

I remembered the fine crosshatch of skin at the nape of her neck and the way she hummed when I stroked her there in passing. My head fell to her soft belly. It met me with resistance. Rigor was setting in. Rotting would be fast on its heels. "Oh God, Bella! What did I do?" I cried into the nothing air, an atmosphere that was devoid of my lover. I'd never felt so completely alone, not even upon waking, without my mother and father, as a bloodthirsty ghoul.

Night, then morning, then noon. Another dusk, dawn, midday. I never moved from my resting place, and wished I could die just where I was.

Devastated.

She was gone. For two days, Bella had egressed.

It was too long, far too fucking long.

I had one task to take care of before I went to her.

At the edge of the meadow, we'd cleared a large square of earth, razed it, planted it up with perennials, shrubs, and fledgling trees. It was here that I buried Bella. Amidst blooming flowers and leafy pines, I lowered her casket into the ground. Inside, she slept. On her hand were my mother's ring and her wedding band. She was otherwise unadorned. With one last look at her face, peaceful in repose, I had closed the lid with the gentlest touch after I pressed my lips to hers.

Now she was cold as me.

Sweeping my hand upon the hard wood of the box, I said one more goodbye to that body I had adored, but not to her spirit.

Endeavoring to be strong, I lifted her down into the hole.

Topside, I clawed soil, shredded petals, tore at the grass. This small ceremony of me and her was nearly worse than the moment I had felt her heart still. Bleak and broken, I found my voice and put words to the lullaby I'd composed for Bella so very long ago, as I'd promised her.

But my faith faltered. I was neither as courageous nor as durable as I'd believed.

Until I read the epitaph on her gravestone from my hunched over position above the open grave.

_**Bright was her face with smiles, and words of welcome and gladness fell from her beautiful lips, and blessed the cup as she gave it.**_

Standing on shaking legs, I leant over to lay a pristine, perfumed trumpet lily sideways across her coffin, watching the pollen mote out. Rising, I picked the small leather satchel from my trouser pocket. Unloosing the clinched sinew, I shook the contents into my palm. From my grasp I watched the golden grains rain down over the dark polished wood. Gold dust sprinkled over her, merging with the ochre giftof the lily, making the whole thing shimmer.

Hours later, maybe it was days, I finally left her graveside.

Bella's body was beneath the strata of loam, but her being was waiting for me.

As were Emmett and Jasper.

Emmett knew what to do with my ashen pile; scatter it far and wide so the cinders could never commingle again. But for my chest, steel-like skin and unshatterable bones that held space for my heart. The heart that belonged to Bella though it had never known rhythm in her presence. _Those particles_ were to be locked tight in a coffin of the same build and size as Bella's.

When choosing our inscriptions, Bella mine and me hers, it was so simple. There was no other choice, there never was…_with us_.

Seated next to her headstone, mine would read:

_**He was a valiant youth, and his face**_**, **_**like the face of the**__** morning, gladdened the earth with its light, and ripened through into action.**_

I had told them not to come to me, having bid them goodbye at Bella's bedside. Carlisle, Esme. Alice and Rosalie. Peter and Charlotte. I could cope with no more grief, no more silent keening. Everything that needed to be said, had been…for near-on two hundred years. Bella and I had held hands that day of their leaving us to our final solitude. Our solidarity a staunch thing. Now a master at my mind reading ability, I shut out thoughts, focused on words alone. Resigned, the gathered no longer opined. But the mourning would not be denied. Less than speeches, more caresses and loving touches, we each sought a degree of closure that left such a gaping wide hole in the fabric of our family I wondered if it would ever heal.

Yet I had to believe it would.

Their agony was clear. Turning over their faces, plowing up their eyes, tilling their lips into craven facsimiles of smiles. Trying not to bereave before time. Bella graciously, lovingly, accepted each word and hug and lingering stroke upon her magisterially aged flesh. All the while, she alone of all of us had tears of warm salt tracking down her face, dampening the collar of her shirt, wetting my hand as I clasped her to me over her collar bone.

Sister, daughter; brother, son.

_I could have stopped this._

"You would never have loved me any other way, Edward," Bella had silenced me, as if inhabiting my head, as husbands and wives were prone to do after so much time together.

Firm and bold and still strong and vibrant, she clasped my cheeks while I feared for the papery porcelain skin of her palms on my perma-flesh, "We _will_ see them hence."

I nodded an affirmation that found justice over her lips, "I will find _you_ again."

As a family, we would congregate. Eventually. In a millennia or two. Of that I was certain…we did have souls, otherwise I would never have let Bella live, and die, as a mortal woman. I had to trust that now.

Unable to do this thing by myself, I turned to euthanasia by vampire. Only by my brothers' hands. Emmett and Jasper were strong enough to kill me, men enough to allow me this, and filled with such complete filial devotion that though they would scream and cry non-tears like a crocodile, they would not fail me.

I needed them to understand this was not the end.

With new resilience, a racing of anticipation, a weird current tensed my thighs…she was so close!

They waited in Bella's and my bedroom. I would die where she had. Dirty from my toil, I showered one last time.

Cleaned and ready, clear-eyed and craving finality, I joined them.

There were no more words I could utter but this, "I owe you." Looking each in the eye as I embraced them, weighty sobriety dimmed my giddiness at seeing Bella again. A small half-smile was upon my lips, quivering and unformed until I thought of my wife.

Filling out, my smile widened my mouth, our eternity was so close!

"I'm ready," I nodded to my brothers, trying to ignore the hesitation of their movements.

"I love you."

Those were my final words.

Neither of them spoke as they set about the gruesome work of dismembering me so I could return to my one love; with their faces harrowed, hearts bleeding, eyes sobbing dryly, hands clenched into talons that tore me apart.

I swallowed my screams, followed the peaceful sleepy hypnosis Jasper arched over the room, enclosing us three in an umbrella of death and tranquility so at odds with my maiming at their hands.

It was true what they said. Not the tunnel vision and blinding white light. But the _shutter-flash-shutter_ of a life in reverse through a 35MM lens. It was not my years I watched, but Bella's. Every little thing, each nuance and laugh, every angered moment, years of walking, talking, reading, eating, hand holding. Days and nights and decades of love making, fucking, the titillating moments of le petit mort taking me to my own demise.

A seamless shift from there to here.

The pronounced silence was…_astounding._

Where was she?

_Oh God! Where was Bella?_

Instant terror horrified me more than my own death! Was this simply more Purgatory? I'd hoped to easily come to her, believed too readily. Dashed to my knees with crushing misery, I sank in upon myself.

Bereft, estranged, it took something akin to the growling wash of minutes for me to understand this fatality was so final it took me back to where I had been when I was truly seventeen. In the hospital ward, infirm with influenza. That day when I should have died completely but was instead made a living monument to the boy I had been.

So I could meet the love of my infinity almost nine decades later.

Foreign wetness sprang to my eyes as I gulped deep breaths down into my chest that filled fully with oxygen. The film of tears I had forgotten the feel of momentarily blinded me, until the slick fat drops spilled out and over my cheeks and into my mouth, and I tasted saltiness that was vaguely familiar, if I reached down far enough.

This liquid was saline and saliva. Not venom.

This pounding was my heart. Not a desiccated organ.

This warmth, spreading, coursing, speeding, escalating was my blood. Not the empty filthy veins of yore.

Ultimate ending had given me human body.

I inhaled and shook and tried to stand upon weakened legs but was pressed back down by a body blanketing my back.

_Oh, thank you, Thank You! _

She was here!

Grazing her hand up my shoulder, over my neck, stroking my Adam's apple that shunted with my weeping, Bella's fingers on me were no longer incinerating. Her hand held power, and I felt her fingertips dent my skin whereas before they had bounced off.

"Edward," she gasped, stealing forward to settle in my lap, "You're blushing!"

My face heated again, and I ducked into her hair, her neck, her flesh that never again would be such an obstacle to my twinned lusts.

Her voice was undeveloped as her body that rocked upon me, with me, in commune. This was not the beloved woman I had interred, but Bella of old! Returned to her eighteenth year, she was spring, flowers, bare feet and summer sunshine! Not the honeyed, majestic, queenly woman I had just let go.

Clear and ringing, gauzy and hazy, Bella bloomed in my arms when I reclined away to stare in amazement, meeting her equally incredulous look.

Oh so fucking clear and real and now!

"You're a man!" She laughed brilliantly, and that pure sound made the curtain of time that veiled us flutter out and then settle back again over us.

Our lips were starving between words. _Your eyes are ivy. Your skin is the same as mine. Where have you been? How long did it take me? It doesn't matter, an eternity is but a blink of the eye, I always felt you close. _

_You glow._

_You have blood inside of you._

_You're an angel._

_I missed you._

_I missed you._

_We're the same._

I shifted slowly and dragged Bella across me.

_This isn't the same._

Gasps and clutching and clothing disintegrated and never even existed.

_No, it's not._

_I can't hurt you._

_You never did._

The hemisphere of her near womanly lips made a smile over my own young man's mouth. Of innocence and knowledge, virtuous as the young lady I had courted against my will, artless as the woman I'd been blessed to know for more time than I was owed.

Restlessly swelteringly, unbearably needful, Bella was on me, I was in her! My moan was just that. No hiss, growl or snarl.

Her wet and heat was unencumbered by the hint of blood. The anxiety for her tiny frame against my formidable hips, erection, and thrusts melted like the formerly arctic plains of my physique.

With arms that would not break her, and lips that could not crush or mold or form, hands that finally met resistance, I clutched Bella, grappled with her, slowly and sensually and archaically and primitively followed our deaths with a connubial rite of passage that made a mockery of anything anyone else had ever known!

Atoned, I was a man.

And we would never die again.

Her grace was not new. The swirl and swivel of slick heat over me felt insanely insatiable! God, her breasts! Our hearts both beat faster than Father Time could fathom, and I could kiss, lick, suck, pluck every bit of Bella without fear of goring her!

Most inexplicably, the reactions of my body were ten million times more potent than they'd been as a vampire.

To hold her, love her, touch her as a human…it was everything I had ever wanted, and all my imaginings held not a single sand of truth to the reality!

Stars simply extinguished. Time justly stopped. My body was human. And I had little control.

With her posterior making handfuls under my palms, I pulled Bella one more time over me, arced up into her, came as she writhed and pulsed and pounded and cried!

I held her as hard as I wanted, with no fear for bruises or broken bones and watched, languidly, the swivel of her hips rounding down and tearing up my shaft.

"Bella, I-"

She hushed me with one finger to my mouth, begging silence and no apologies, hands on my wide chest, and I fucking felt her weight! Her hair lashed me, and stung. Leaning forward, Bella dove up and down and our nipples met, held, touched and tautened, and I was about to become unglued again!

She sat straight up on my lap, on my cock. So I was far too deep inside. Hair in fists, breasts topped by pink, the rasps of my mouth littered all over her tits and hips, waist and neck, she was a work of art.

Riding me as if we'd never made love, Bella slowed. Sank. And saturated me with the most glorious groan.

I pulled her nipples to my mouth and guided her down to my chest, my shoulder. Legs locked, hips still rocked in slow motion. Sweat sat over both our bodies.

Pulling her like a cover around me, I slid our bodies together.

_My man._

_My woman. My wife._

_Husband._

_This_ was _after_ life.

Time had shed its essence

It held no meaning, not that it ever had for us. But it instead of the morbid crawl of near ninety years before Bella, in lieu of the fast tripping of the clock and calendar during my swift sixty _with_ Bella, this was a cloud, a coil, a light dusting, a fragment and its whole, a feather freed from wing floating down, _down_, dipping, down. Pushed up _up_ flying. Never to Alpha, never to Omega. Floating, but being. Untethered, but knowing. Every touch lasted forever, because there was no such thing as time. There was nothing but _now_.

In this endless stratosphere, all I saw was Bella. Every permutation of her had remained a steel-stamped image in my memory. Always starting and ending with us here. Around our love for the length of aeons was every place we'd ever been. It was real and it wasn't rational; memory, existence, everything just _was._

_After life._

Youth, newness, us, the same, but primitive and civilized. Tried and true.

A time warp.

A fine walk.

A divine being, _together._

Crossing space just once I whispered to Alice, "We live yet."

_~~ll~~_

_Bright was her face with smiles, and words of welcome and gladness fell from her beautiful lips, and blessed the cup as she gave it._

_He was a valiant youth, and his face__, __like the face of the__ morning, gladdened the earth with its light, and ripened through into action._

_

* * *

  
_

~Thoughts? A fresh supply of Kleenex?~

This was originally intended to be my finale. I wrote it at least a month ago, but found in writing another there was a better ending for my Men of Twilight. You can let me know at the end.

_Bella and Edward's tombstone quotes are from Longfellow's _

_Evangeline._

_A Tale of Arcadie_

_Again, I cannot possibly thank __**Vi**__ enough for those thoughts._

I have the most complete adoration for all of you who are keeping up with these and sending me such lovely words of encouragement! Truly, I'm touched.

Oh, and I finally added the Twi 25 voting info, with links, to my profile….or, I'm going to, post haste...maybe tomorrow.

**Now, did I mention something about Pedanticward's honeymoon?**

**Rie~  
**


	24. Juvenile

**The Twilight Twenty-Five  
**Prompt: 08. Juvenile  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: Pedanticward/Sassbella

Rating: M

**Viola Cornuta!** You're the LOML! I _am_ ACORN, but you remain a BAC. And I adore you when you GI. Oh yeah, thanks for the prevent-nup! YBYSA, I love you.

**Disclaimer: **Mine, Mine, Mine! Okay, some of it's hers.

Huge thanks and my forever love to **RowanMoon, Viola Cornuta, and BellaStjerne **for their help in _multiple_ languages!

~~Eyes will roll…the return of Pedanticward and Sassbella~~

* * *

**Juvenile**

Circa 2006

Forks, WA and an undisclosed location

Pedanticward

Bella tried to backpedal.

"I'm too young to get married," she exclaimed in the morning.

"Well, love, I'm not," I countered, smirking and pulling her back over me, massaging her ass and wondering how long I'd have to wait to get back in that tight hot hole.

She muttered a soft, "_Trufax_."

Both my eyebrows rose as did my hands, clasping her shoulders, "You're only as young as you feel, Bella," I cajoled against that impressionable divot just below her earlobe.

Shrinking away, she eyed me up and down causing me to preen just a bit as the sheet slipped away with her, "What does that mean? Are you calling me old?"

_What the devil?_

"No! I…it's just one of those asinine clichés. I didn't think through what I was saying, I'm sorry," mentally, I smacked myself. This was what happened when I spoke in an unpremeditated manner.

"Oh, well," she huffed and settled back to my chest. "I don't want to turn out like Renee." I winced and cringed and pulled a few hairs loose from the crown of my luxuriously bronze-tressed head because that put a new spin on things. "That makes two of us, love!" _Ew, and Hell No! That was a sandwich that put me off blood to even contemplate!_

Compassionately, I rubbed Bella's bare back and simpered against the lovely temptation of her collarbone, "You're nothing like your mother, lover. This has nowt to do with her mistakes, only our timeless, fathomless, endless and incomparable love."

For three weeks Bella hemmed and hawed, chewed and chawed while I paced and clawed at my hair. Yes and then no. No and then yes. I had a severe and near-crippling case of emotional whiplash.

In the end I sweetened the deal with a new car for my darling and one for myself on a job well done. Matching Mercedes, his and hers. The elegant, understated vehicles were so much more appropriate than monogrammed towels. It went without saying _hers_ was missile resistant, as she was a typical female driver. I supposed, actually, her tank of a truck had really been a godsend in its indestructible hulkishness.

Kissing me deeply and pushing me to the hood, _with my submission_, Bella suitably thanked me on her shiny new auto. I thought I heard a small, shushed exhalation when she caressed the metallic finish of the car and then my cock of the same high gloss, "Bout damn time."

"Sorry, love?"

"Will you be mine?"

When she finally capitulated, it went without saying all that was mine would also belong to her. There were certain mores with which I was raised. Bella, however, had other ideas and demanded a prenuptial agreement.

The issue of a prenup almost became a prevent-nup. Deciding financial matters in the event of the death of a partner sent me into a _dépression nerveuse _of epic proportions, because it ultimately dawned on me Bella would die some day if I didn't avert it! How could I have been so misguided and foolish as to give my heart to a human with no backup strategy? At the very least, Bella was aging by the minute! I drove Alice mad with my desire for our future laid out unambiguously. Who did I have to blow to get an HEA after all this drama?

It took every ounce of vampire dazzle I had to convince Bella to accept a suitable portion of my wealth outright. She soothed herself by watching CNBC's "Squawk Box" each afternoon with her back turned toward us all, laptop open, to monitor her portfolio.

Responsibly, we waited until she graduated, and then another three months until Bella celebrated her nineteenth birthday, which threw me into another tizzy as time leaked by. For Bella, it was a milestone. For me it was at least the thankful end of a Cavalier-threatening era; _au revoir Invisalign!_ My _cochon en croute _had been dangerously close to permanent damage -- vampire nature notwithstanding -- more than I cared to remember.

I timed our nuptials and subsequent honeymoon so as not to coincide with her menses as that would lay waste to all my months of planning. It was easy math for me.

The preparation of such a grand affair was nearly seamless due to my multitasking prowess…aside from the music. I'd imagined _Clair de Lune_ to be a given, until Bella, in the throes of what could only be assigned to raging premenstrual tension, rounded on me, "_Clair de Lune_ is not fucking great, Edward!"

My eyes widened in surprise, and my face blanched ghoulishly pale, "What?" I struggled to understand what she meant.

"Oh Hell, Edward. You decide. Either I said, '_Clair de Lune_ is less than first rate' or, 'That fucking song is beginning to grate.' Think of it as a _choose your own adventure._ Either way, the outcome is the same."

_Wait, what? Did she say cum? Fuck. What?_

I sighed heavily and then retaliated the only way I knew, "You do understand, love, _choose your own ending_ books are not classified as real literature, right?"

Bella said something under her breath and stomped from the room leaving me with her last viperish utterance, "_Shake Ya Ass_ would be much more fitting."

_Hmmm, that had promise._

The day of our wedding dawned as every other three hundred and sixty-four Forks days; gray, damp, cloudy.

The weather couldn't put a pout on my mouth. In four hours, Bella Swan was to become Mrs. Edward Cullen!

I peacocked and strolled the garden while her appearance was made acceptable.

A popinjay, I sat to my Baby Grand, replacing the strains Debussy with my own composition I liked to call _Etude in loneliness to love, the fruition of a vampire made man, replete and no longer alone, made whole and masculine with purpose by the mortal woman of his dreams._ I started playing a good twelve minutes before her processional was to commence. The piercing melody would take a quarter of an hour and less than half my talented concentration to complete.

Still running my skilled fingers over the keys, I turned when the talk behind me quieted.

Here she was. My bride. _Oh thank God, her dress wasn't puce or even in the green family!_

I pulsed over the last notes of my dedication and sauntered to the altar to watch Bella's approach.

Simply sheathed in a charming pale gray-blue wash of satin, Bella was as stunning as she was when naked, or wearing those beribboned panties with lacy mesh scantily hiding her breasts.

Thankfully, Alice had planned ahead, ordering a couture _robe de marriage._ Was it any wonder we were _deux pois dans une cosse?_

Jasper held the Good Book open in his hands and looked to me. "Ladies first, of course," I gallantly pressed.

Bella's vows were succinct and over quickly, perhaps even chary; most unlike her powerful endless orgasms and her detailed instructions to me in order I should aptly bring her to climax. I would have shed a tear had I an ounce of liquid besides venom to give; instead I held her fey hand in mine and imagined her trouncing my cock at the first opportunity as my Missus.

There was a resounding shuffle of feet and an echo of one hundred sighs when I cleared my throat, unnecessarily. I took that as a good sign.

Modifying my simple vows spur of the moment from what we'd agreed to, I carried on for more than five minutes. I did have rather a lot to say. Halfway through I was interrupted by stifled yawns and perhaps a _snore?,_ all of which I chalked up to human fatigue and restlessness.

As I continued, I must have misread the pursing of Bella's lips that seemed to fashion, _"What an epic unending soliloquy. Perhaps your mouth would be better put to a monologue, more aptly, MY Vagina Monologue."_

As we were in the middle of our connubial ceremony, I had no opportunity to question her.

My ring to her finger and hers to mine completed our dynasty in the making. My lips cantering carnally against Bella's -- my wife! -- joined the circle of our love and lust!

I choked back a tearless sob – _Her ass was legally MINE, MINE, MINE!_

Outside, under the enormous tent, over the parquet floor, Bella and I were called to the center for our first dance.

_Mother bugger!_ Bella's choice? _Shake Ya Ass, _by Mystikal! Well, I'd asked for it. But, hell! If I thought about Bella shaking that curvy ass against me at this moment, I might just give way to my savage tendencies right here and now. Copulation in public was on the table, but not at our wedding reception, _dammit!_

Bella sashayed to me, her finger hooked and pulling me to her like a magnet. She smoothed her hands down her hips and planted her feet in the high strappy heels exactly a shoulder's width apart. I was pleased with her formulaic lines.

Her eyes lowered as did her hips. _All the way to the floor._

_Fuck!_ I could feel her hot breath against my crotch – _Was she going to give me dry job right here?_ Surely not!

Laughter boomed around us, my smile turned into a very hungry grin when she rolled back up to her full height. I grabbed her waist and brought her flush to me, "Bella, you know I'm already dead, love. No need to try to kill me tonight in front of everyone."

Settling my palms to her shaking ass, I moved her across my erection. Unbelievably everyone clapped – _did they think they were getting a free show tonight?_ Charlie, however, gaped like one of his trout; the man had a gift for fishy impersonation.

"_Tu me rends fou_," I gasped against her smiling lips. And she _was_ making me completely crazy.

Bella mumbled, "The feeling's mutual, I assure you."

She gyrated up and down the thigh I braced between her legs. I slid the sumptuous raw silk up from her ankles above her knees until her garter was exposed for all to see. Bending her back, I hushed into her neck, "_Je veux te fourrer._"

Oh Jesus, did I ever want to fuck Bella!

_Shit, did she just shake her booty at me?_

Fuck me, when had the slang term _booty_ infiltrated my pristine vocabulary?

She was going to be the death of all my gentlemanly impulses!

Bella spun around, pulled what looked like fifty pins from her hair and undulated down to the floor, swaying all the way. It was all I could do to withhold myself from swatting that sensational rear, round and fine in the satiny icy blue glove.

I stole her back to me for a kiss at her nape and a clasp to the pillowy undersides of her heaving breasts before the next song started.

My choice? Shakira's _Hips Don't Lie._ To set the mood for our secret destination honeymoon. _Attraction, perfection, I can see you're body moving._

_I never really knew that she could dance like this  
She makes a man want to speak Spanish,  
Como se llama, bonita, mi casa, su casa_

Bella swiveled all around me, and I began to think this was a really bad idea! Trumpet, drums, and her hips?

I bit my lip and frowned. I bent down and pulled her legs over my waist as she lingually meshed out the lyrics:

_Oh baby when you talk like that  
You make a woman go mad  
So be wise and keep on  
Reading the signs of my body_

_And I'm on tonight  
You know my hips don't lie  
And I'm starting to feel it's right  
All the attraction, the tension  
Don't you see baby, this is perfection._

Her maracas moved against me and almost all of her cleavage was bared, completely untamed and really fucking hot!

Pushing my hand up the ruched fabric of her gown, I grabbed Bella's ass and growled!

Dipping her so her mahogany locks swept the floor, I stilled her hips and her breasts with my hands flattened to her body.

Applause melted around us.

It was time to go!

Rice beat us like hail, and I wondered what asshole had imagined that trite tradition. Teeny pink welts were raised on Bella's shoulders, and I simply didn't want anything marring the radiant cream of her skin.

Ushering her past well-wishers who wanted to linger, I placed her in my new Merc, and we made for the airport.

This was what we all wanted, or most importantly, _me_; ten parts wedding and one thousand three hundred and ninety-nine parts honeymoon!

_~~ll~~_

Realizing the error of my ways in not taking full advantage of the semi-privacy of Target's dressing rooms, I'd fashioned a plan for our induction into the Mile High Club. It went without saying, but I reiterated to myself anyway; _only because we were in First Class. Certainly not in Coach! That would be tantamount to fucking in a one-stop-shop._

My shudder of distaste nudged Bella's arm resting next to mine in the cushy seats of the airplane's posh upperclass cabin, causing a dribble of sparkling bubbly to spill onto the back of her hand, which brought to mind my own pale _foutre_ dripping over her fingers.

Bella smacked a bubble and lifted her glass again.

Champagne with mint gum? I shivered again.

_It couldn't be. Bella was chewing gum?_

"Bella-love, are you…_chewing gum?_"

Nodding, sighing, she set her glass aside with the possible mumble of, _"Not even off the ground and HWGA."_

Reprovingly I mentioned, "You just got rid of your teeth straighteners; you know that will mess up the perfect placement of your bite, love. Additionally, it's without question an insult to an entirely adequate _cava_ to mix it with Carefree Sugarless."

Her lips curled in an unattractive manner, "_Fuck's sake, should I call you dad or pops?"_

"Excusez-moi?"

"But my ears will pop!"

Oh my little _peepee popper._ "Bella, I have plans that should assist with your popping problem."

Mutely, I held out my hand for her to plop the slimy vivid green into my palm. Discreetly, I folded it into the vomit bag.

"So, _husband_, this proposal of yours?" Bella looked at me expectantly.

I tangled my long instrumental fingers into her wavy locks and brought her ear slowly to my lips, blaming the rumble of the plane's engines throttling for take-off for what sounded like Bella's grumble, _"AFDN."_ "I think it's _high _time we discovered the joys of public congress, Bella."

Just as I was about to nuzzle the exquisitely trembling pulse below her lobe, my lover pulled away, "In plain English?"

Over her pursed mouth I breathed, "The Mile High Club."

From one corner of her lips to the other, I dazed her into breathlessness, tempted to pull down the oxygen mask and check her vitals. Thank goodness Bella recovered when I released her mouth, a crooked half-grin-smirk lifting my thoroughly kissed mouth. Leaning her head against the chair she whispered, "_Oh, Edward!_ TMHC!"

_TMHC?_ A bright light finally shone! Leet speak? I preferred to type complete words when texting but had heard of this phenomenon, another travesty of the 21st century.

So, _AFDN?_ It took but less than a second for me to figure that one out: _Any Fucking Day Now._ And then, _HWGA_? _Here We Go Again?_ Surely not!

Her body began to radiate the heat I so enjoyed and the antiseptic air filled with the bouquet of her aroused fragrance so I ignored her sassyremarks. Wanting her nice and wet and ready before we hit the cubicle, I made my voice low as dark velvet and bombarded her with French phrases, hoping to drown out the cipher slang as I nibbled her chin, her lovely collarbone, her gasping lips, "_J'ai envie de toi desperatement. Je veux te prendres dans mes bras et denais ton parfum."_

With the ding of the seatbelts sign shutting off, I ushered Bella to the lavatory. Squeezing in behind her, I locked the door.

Quietly giggling, Bella bit her lip. It looked so tasty I snacked lightly on it myself. She retaliated and gnawed on mine and the frisson of her tiny incisors on my impermeable skin was an explosion igniting me!

I bumped my elbow against the elfish sink while lowering her pretty fig colored thong to the floor, making sure it didn't touch the germy wasteland beneath our feet. Running my long fingers like liquid up her inner thighs, I met a most pleasant surprise…_Bella was soaking wet!_ There'd be no need for the travel sized bottle of lube I'd picked up during a clandestine trip to Target – that abomination to my classically trained senses was beginning to grow on me like an unhealthy fungus. Doing a silent congratulatory dance that my intentionwas going according to design_,_I accordioned my digits in and out of her, once again thrilling at her nether _bouche_ sans bush.

No olive toned knickers, total saturation, and a waxed pussy…_Fuck! I loved Mrs. Cullen!_

I stood up and mashed my mouth to hers roughly, and her little tiny hands opened my buckle, button and zipper hastily.

A bright pupil, Bella could now studiously swallow my cock in various stances, but no matter my speedy geometry, there was no way she'd be able to DT me in this WC, much to my dismay.

Smoothing the ridges on my forehead as well as the veiny topping over hard-soft flesh of my cock all the way up the ruffle of my foreskin, tamping down the toxin sliding out, Bella demanded, "Bring that BANANA over here."

"I prefer the term _blette, _love, if we must get down to it," I rehashed for the millionth time.

"_Getting down to it, YES, let's already!"_

Sucking her nipples through the part I'd made in her blouse, I queried, "What, love?"

"Fuck me now, Edward, I'm so ready!" Bella wrapped her legs around my hips and held her cunt an inch and two tenths away from my cock.

If we were going to join the mile high club, we were going to do it right.

"Wait!" I pleaded, feeling the fire of her body so close to my own subzero dick, widening my stance, swiping two paper towels from the dispenser and placing them on the microscopic counter before setting Bella's ass down.

All the while I figured the rising altitude in my head, plunging closer and closer to her copiously damp recess with each foot ascended.

At precisely five thousand two hundred and eighty feet, I lunged into Bella's core! Everything in the little room shook with my force, but I mused on her breasts that bounced about beautifully!

Blue chemically water sloshed around the toilet, determined to be a mood killer, but I wouldn't have that.

Maintaining my pace, I belted into her in time with each of her epithets, "Fuck. Yes. More. Don't Stop!"

I could hardly stop, the unreckoned turbulence was throwing me into Bella at an alarming tempo!

Groaning, hissing, howling, growling and cussing, I accomplished a great feat of acrobatics: juggling her tits, stroking her sumptuous bottom to ensure it never touched anunsanitary surface, I even managed to languidly circle her clitoris with my nail while I nailed her in a contortionist's testament to my paranormal dexterity and strength.

If only I could get her into the right position to hit her g-spot. Alas, even I had to admit defeat sometimes.

The thin air was supposed to heighten Bella's response. The lack of O2 meant I couldn't very well beg her to keep her eyes focused and non-rolly, or ask her to scream my name loud and clear, but a nice, long unintelligible climax flourished through her and I myself came in six or seven ceaseless ropey spurts of thick, creamy -- _chunky?_ -- semen-like substance.

I pulled out of Bella, supporting her against the shaking of the plane and put our clothing in order just as a nasally voiced air hostess requested over the speaker, "_Please return to your seats."_

In the nick of time, our marriage was consummated.

_~~ll~~_

Unbeknownst to Bella, we were approaching Isle Esme. It was no Lesbos, and mores the pity, because girl-on-girl, Sappho, a threesome, me and Bella and someone else in an orgy of bacchanalian proportions! That shit was hot!

But it was secluded, a necessary ingredient for the further fruition of my campaign, and muggy enough that Bella's irritating habit of chattering her teeth when my icicle of a cock was inside of her – _that definitely got in the way of her ability to pronounce clearly while I fucked her_ – would cease.

Tilling the wheel, tending the sails, out on the open Pacific, I vowed that one day my wife would have an entire country named after her, if only I could figure out which nation to usurp!

Bella placed a fragile hand upon mine, upon the wheel, and smoothed my knuckles, "What's wrong, Edward?"

"Oh, nothing, my love. Just thinking."

"Yes, dear, you do that a lot."

As if she'd requested me to continue my train of thought aloud, "Not long ago I couldn't find my own arse with a flashlight and a map, and a compass. Now look what I have before me! There's so much I want to show you, give to you, my lovely Mrs. Cullen."

I watched a gorgeous blush spread like a watercolor stain over Bella's chest and visage; the warmth of her blood never ceased to call to me, as a man and a vampire.

"_Naturellement, mon cavelier. Maintenant heure de monter vers le haut." _

I let go of the spinnaker and gawped at my wife, "Bella! You spoke _la langue francaise!"_

"You don't know everything about me, Edward," Bella smiled up at me while I unraveled her statement. Apparently not, because of her malfunctioning mind! She'd just stated, in one of my favorite languages, _"Of course, my cavalier. Now it's time to mount up." _

The island neared off the bow, the dying light glittering against the bay and creating a mesmerizing golden orange backdrop to the small outcrop in the middle of the sea.

As we approached the dock, Bella was appositely appreciative of the setting and the vacation home before us, "Oh, it's stunning, Edward!"

Leaping to the jetty, I lifted her out, "I don't mean to be a bear, my love, but I'd prefer it if at times you'd call me husband, or even Mr. Cullen." _Master or sir would work too, JS._

Rearing back, Bella raised an eyebrow.

"You know, to drive home our marital status, of course, darling."

She maintained her arched brow.

"Uh, and, oh! Master or sir? I was _just kidding."_

"Besides, _Mrs. Cullen_, what I really wanted to say was architecture concretizes our existential space, while nature illumines our spiritual waste."

She rolled her eyes.

Maybe I'd over done it? She knew how much I hated her rolling her pretty doe-brown eyes.

But then she laughed and skipped down the planks. Meeting the beach she shoved off her sandals and kicked up flawless white sand into billowing clouds!

She really was a treasure! _And mine, mine, mine for the pleasure!_

Thank fuck I hadn't said that aloud.

Hoping she'd put the time to good use and slather the strawberry perfumed body lotion on every available surface, I granted Bella a human moment to her _toilette_ while I did a few thousand laps around the cove.

My second port of call? The placid turquoise waters of the ocean and Bella's walls around my member.

Standing in the still water, the current slowing down, I felt her displacement in modest rippling waves that broke against my implacable ass.

I smelled strawberries and other, more tropical, fruit.

Sniffing again, there was even the tincture of Bella's sluicing sensuality.

I turned to her, pleased by her nudity and the glimmer of the dusk over her high spherical breasts and down to her dipped-in waist. Her nipples puckered and turned a deeper, sexier persimmon _couleur_ the longer I observed.

My John Thomas bounced against Bella's thigh, and I was not going to mess about with foreplay. Smushing her tits together, I gained two nipples for the price of one – I thought that was very fucking economical; the trustees of Target would be proud of me! – and suckled them between the edges of my teeth, mouthing them with my lips. Grabbing ass, clenching hair, sucking hard, I worked my way into my wife, stopping briefly at the hilt so she could adjust and gasp _and_ remember to breathe.

The imposing length and girth of my cock winding in and slowing out set up a new flow to the ocean. Miniature tsunamis brought seafoam to the shore.

I encased her back and pushed down on her bottom, crowded her breasts to my chest, and eyeballed her ecstatic face whilst listening for her exhalations.

Prompting Bella, I snarled, "Fuck, yes, baby! You're so wet! So hot and tight and blazing and narrow! Promise me you'll never change!"

Bella reined up, licked my ear and scraped her teeth to my jaw, "Well, I'm only human, _Mr. Cullen."_

_Shit! She was right! Anything could happen. Why must I think of this now? Bella was aging. FUCK!_

I tuned out my inner speech enough to finish my erogenous work. Focusing on the here and now, I congratulated myself on a fine choice of venue for our honeymoon one more time. With the ocean licking all around us, there was no need for lubricant yet again! In fact, I could barely keep hold of my squirmy mermaid.

Especially when the sharks started circling.

They smelled dinner! What the fuck? Was I not the most frightening predator of the food chain? Was I not scary or vampire enough?

This was almost worse than coming to terms with the preposterous idea my ejaculate was not the ambrosia of gods!

As if she could hear my thoughts, the maid appeared on the beach to lay out towels and call, "_Le puedo ofrecer algo más, Don Eduardo_?"

I shook my head as I ran to the shoreline, stating, "_Eso es todo, gracias, María Concepción_." We needed no more interference tonight.

Wrapping us up in a cocoon of fluffy terry cloth, we adjourned to the cottage. My cock was near purple with starvation.

My arm beneath her knees, I cradled Bella and carried her bridal style to our suite for nothing less would suit The Mrs. Edward Anthony Masen Cullen.

I couldn't have been more pleased with the décor of the boudoir. There was even a fainting couch, which I measured minutely with a narrowing of my eyes, acknowledging it to be the right height to bend Bella over and reenact our anal experience.

"Would you look at that _confidante_, Mrs. Cullen?" I placed Bella on the bed heaped in white and pale brown linens echoing the mirage outside the patio door.

She pulled her hair back, raising her breasts so they teased my pontificating mouth, and slid her legs open to my dick, "GOYHH, _my cavalier."_

Groaning into her mouth, I formed the words for her texty acronym: _Get off your high horse?_ Shit! I was going to ride her so hard she'd be beseeching for my Cav into the next century, as soon as I could change her into a vampire!

Splaying her ivory legs, making a mental note to cover them in SPF 50 sunscreen tomorrow, I dipped to her _juncture._ Waxed, plucked, shaved, denuded, Bella's _plote_ was pure heaven.

Hooded and yearning, my eyes met hers, "_Tu goute aussi doux que de mile."_

Testing her, I slipped my tongue flat and straight from her opening to her clit, and _FUCK!_, she really did taste as good as honey.

Bella fisted my hair nearly hurtfully and shoved me into her pelvis, "Just shut up and give me a DWPKOTL!"

"Huh?"

"DISTO?"

"DSTR8!"

I played Bella like a baby grand. The dunes of her flesh wet to the lap of my tongue. _Deep wet passionate kiss on the lips_ was what she wanted and that's what I gave her, French kissing her cunt until her thighs were jumping against the stronghold of my forearms.

_Damn Straight, She'd Said That Outloud!_

I assuaged my exasperation at her declarations by sinking my preternatural _langue_ in and out of her at a furious speed.

The nerve, the audacity!

The FEATHERS!

Too pent up to attempt anymore Kama Sutra gymnastics, I settled for the missionary position.

Her hips in my hands and the pillow in my bared teeth, I came within five charges, ripping the down to shreds and shuttling eight or nine streams of cool jism into Bella while she pluffed plumage from her face in her cataclysmic orgasm. The scream I'd waited for in a language I could get behind wholeheartedly curled from her throat, _"Tu est un bon coup!"_

YES!!! "_You're a great fuck too Bella-love, darling wife, Mrs. Cullen!"_

She slept amongst the feathery plumes, while I happily inspected her nubile naked body for all the suck marks and fingerprints our love making had caused. The sharp pointed quills reminding me of my pen and ink well, my _secretaire_ and heavy stock stationery back home, making a mockery of cellphones and texting. Before I knew it, the sun had risen, and it was time to rouse my wife with the promise of breakfast.

A flare detonated within my groin as she joined me in the kitchen, indiscreetly adjusting her brassiere and tucking her nipples in to the webbed pale gray lace. The hue of early spring poppies, her nipples propped up, stretching the mesh that sequestered her tits.

_Bye bye sports bras, and about goddamn time too!_

"_Huevos_, Bella?"

She licked her lips and devoured the stiffness growing inside my khaki shorts, "Mmmm, yes, I do love _huevos_, husband dear."

My God! If I didn't know better, I would've inferred Bella was commenting on my testicles with that vulgar Spanish word!

Cheekily, I replied, "Flan?" All the while remembering the fluid flavor of her flange.

Bella nibbled my lips in a most saucy manner, "Are you being coy with me, _Sir_?"

I gasped and came far too close to dropping the eggs I'd been juggling to the tiled floor!

_Sir, Master…yes! _My happy jig was back full force!

After breakfast, reclined into the dry heated dusty sprinkles of the bright white sand, I watched with drooping darkening lusting eyes as my wife came to me. Settling beside me, she massaged SPF 50+ sunscreen into her ivory skin, making my fingers itch to replace her own. Fully coquettish, Bella blushed and asked me if I was enjoying the scenery.

"Indeed, my love. I was just appreciating the way your bikini accentuates your charming assets. You did a fine job picking out-"

She _squirted_ another handful of cream onto her palm, and my cock twitched excitedly. "Baby, just tell it like it."

"Alright then. Mrs. Edward Anthony Masen Cullen, you're smoking hot!"

A few minutes later, Bella was pacing a small path into the dune next to our blanket, "I'm so hot, Edward!"

_Perhaps the heat was frying her brain._ I recapped, "Yes, Bella, you're most definitely on fire." In that string bikini that rested so tastefully on the slim fragile skin of her hips, a cute bow nestled between her breasts…I'd checked the label earlier…._Lucky Brand._ _Yeah, she was absolutely going to get lucky later, especially as the teeny bikini clearly wasn't a purchase from Target!_

She halted and stomped her foot dangerously close to my head, "Dammit, Edward, it's not for nothing you brought me to this tropical island, was it?"

"Well, I just thought…free vacation?"

"Do I need to text it to you?"

Sweat was glistening in Bella's cleavage, little drops were slipping down her taut belly to her beveled navel. She puffed a tangle of hair off her forehead. _Oh. OH!_ I was a Bella's personal air conditioning unit, and she wanted to cuddle!

"Come here, love. Let me cool you down," Bella sat pleasantly in my lap, thereby heating me up.

I mopped up her perspiration with my hands and my tongue, pulled the triangular scraps of fabric down both tits. Tugging sharply at her nipples, I asked, "More comfortable?"

"_Ungghhh-gaaahhhhh."_

Below Bella's bellow, I heard feet shifting on the beach. _Shit._ The maid was coming to us with a fan, the cord leaving a snakish shape in the sand. Quickly covering Bella's bosom with my body, I imperially dismissed María Concepción with a flick of my wrist and a firm, "_Puede retirarse._"

_Receptive_ to my _core curriculum_ for our honeymoon – I would endeavor to get my dick in her derriere as many times as possible, so had furtively given this trip a sobriquet: _The Heineymoon --_ my Bella-love even had a few suggestions of her own. The hammock seemed unnecessarily precarious; who knew she was such a thrill seeker? Hell, if she was game, so was I!

Lying on the rocking netting strung between two tall palms, I raised my wife's posterior up over my cock. Sliding her onto me, I jumped at the scorching contact, almost plummeting us to the ground! Undaunted, Bella pressed on my shoulders and rode me with abandon, jostling the swing from side to side while the timbers groaned, and the webbing began to slice open beneath my back!

_Fuck!_ This wasn't going to work, I should have known better than to go outside my set syllabus.

Redoubling my effort, I took Bella to the beach. She gained control of situation, and I allowed her to lead. Splaying my thighs, she settled between them, lapping up my muscles and silently asking me to raise my ass off the ground. I did as requested, hearing a little, "_Oh, yes. I can't wait to rim you again."_

I elevated to my elbows and quirked an eyebrow.

"What, darling husband? I just mentioned that we never did get around to listening to Rimsky Korsakov."

Then her incinerating tongue was at my ass, and I fell back with a duststorm clouding around us!

When my cock was humongously swelled, and the entire southern region of my body thoroughly wet with her saliva, Bella sat back, a self-satisfied smile playing over her puffy mouth.

Suddenly, particles of sharp sand were sticking to my bum. Fuck! I was already buffed to a high sheen, and this was _not_ the type of friction I needed!

Figuring, through a series of rapid formulas, I was lubricated enough by her ministrations to have a go at her rear, I turned the tables and lifted her to her hands and knees. Salving the scratches and welts raised on her sensitive skin with my numbing toxin straight from my mouth, I licked and sucked Bella's silky pussy and her nether button-hole…I was _not_ to be stopped by Mother Nature or any of her dastardly doings!

Bella's head fell forward to the hilled soil where she hushed, "You're so FINE, Edward."

Pushing, tenderly and slowly as possible, into her _cul,_ I deciphered the latest acronym. Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic, Emotional? I breached the final distance of her hot clamp and shook with restraint; _that had to be a mistake!_

"Feels so good! So Hot, so wet and tight!" I watched my shaft wind in and out of her dumpling ass and had no control as I slapped one round flushed cheek!

With what I thought was a tender tap.

"Geez, FUCK! _Encule._ That hurt!"

My dick was stationery, my hand soothed the rising mark on her pretty globe, my mind worked over time…_she did not just call me arsehole, did she?_

"Sorry, love! I was a tad over eager. And I heard that some women like a bit of slap and tickle."

Over her shoulder where the diamonds of sand twinkled in the beating sunrays, Bella disciplined, "And here I thought you were such a WOG. Maybe we should get Jasper to give you a little love tap sometime, eh? See how much you like that."

_Wise Old Guy?_ Wait, _Jasper?_ Where had that come from? _My God!_ Had Bella been contemplating a three-way? With my own brother? _Srsly?_

Her ass clenched, and my cock was screaming to carry on. Her labias, both Majora and Minora, were wet against my gonads.

Pulling off me and then pushing back onto me with a supremely erotic circle of her hips, Bella informed me, "Sensual slap, _Master._ Erogenous, not punitive."

_Yes, I could do this, especially when she called me Master!_

I rallied and sallied forth into her dear derriere and softened my blow to a mere smarting, arousing tap, all the while demanding hoarsely, "BOHICA, baby."

"Oh yes, holy crow, fuck yes, Oh My God, _Bend over here it comes again?_ Unh, Edward, I love it when you sext me!"

I slapped her lightly again and then caressed the stamp of my palm on her flesh…_really?_ Apparently so. When I reached around to circle her clitoris, Bella's folds were literally pooling with dripping natural arousal! _Arrivederci_lubricant!

"Cum with me, Bella!"

"HWGA, A! _Aaahhhhh, Edward-husband!" _Bella screamed all the right words, and I moaned through an intense, jerking, broiling orgasm that waved up through me like the frothy ocean at our feet.

_~~ll~~_

The following week and five days, twelve hours and forty-seven minutes, were an oasis of sexual escapades, here there and everywhere; fellatio, cunnilingus, and an abundance of Graphenberger action.

_Not to mention _eggs. I was still reeling that Bella-love-wife could ingest the milky viscous runny unctuous globs with delight and ease while she yet balked at my own surely honeyed essence!

_As well as_ the obliteration of several more feather pillows, one mattress and a fair few headboards until María Concepción singlemindedly and singlehandedly -- _at the very least she had a strong work ethic_ – removed all but the necessary furniture from the cottage with a fulminating, _"Bendito Dios! ... como destrozó la cabecera de la cama, hay plumas por doquier, engendro del demonio acabó la casa!"_

I took offense to her rampage against the disaster I reaped while making love to Bella, not to mention her calling me a demonic monster. I was a well-bred young vampire enjoying a much deserved hieneymoon with his wife!

She left the premises with a, "Para que más soy buena?" Followed by muttering, "Sanguijuela chupasangre".

_Blood sucking leech?_ That was nearly the last straw.

Bella in an endless array of expensively revealing lingerie soothed the insult. But our evenings of frivolity and fucking were always replaced by recurring nightmares, "Stop, Edward! DON'T!..._GO._"

Thank goodness she finally remembered to end her demand properly, though her syntax seemed a bit off.

In two days we were due back mainland.

Bella was getting ballsy and brazen. She sat in the middle of the bed wearing a short midnight black lace confection that hardly withheld her sweet tits from overflowing the filigreed cups, watching me disrobe.

Regally, she commanded, "Bring that flappy thing over here."

I stalled with my shorts hobbling my ankles, my hands on my hips, my _flappy thing_ rigid and pointing straight at her. Silently, I stroked my cock, making sure to pull the foreskin tight up over the head before running the slack skin all the way back down to the base.

She merely raised an eyebrow in challenge.

Bella made my venom boil when she dared me like this! I darted my tongue to my bottom lip, she struck back by scissoring her teeth into her own lower plump lip and tossing her chestnut tresses back.

"You know my cock is not just a _flappy thing_, love."

"Oh, I know. It's a Cavalier, a hoodie, a turtleneck, a _cochon en croute_, a lovely long thick _passementiere._ Your cock is tassled and bedecked and big and beautiful and decorated with…_foreskin._ Not one bit _sans prepuce._"

_Goddamn!_ She dazzled me!

"Otherwise known as Rumpelstiltskin and a pig in a blanket!" Bella giggled and flushed a gorgeous shade of sunset pink.

I frowned and stole nearer the bed. Leaning over her until her giggles died out, I tutored her one more time, "That's a slander to all Romantic Languages, lovely wife. I think you mean, _un pli de peau couvrant le bout du pénis._"

Her wee fingers ticked my nipples up into precise engorgement, a mirroring swelling filled my shaft with another ripple of poison. I groaned and cupped her face. She kissed me long and deep, passionately, wetly, before pulling back, "What was that about the Roundheads versus the Cavaliers, darling?"

Standing straight, I released her and turned on my heel. Trapped with my shorts still at my ankles, I nearly stumbled. I yanked off the offending outerwear and pinched my nose with a pace-pace-pace combined with hair grabbing and moaning-groaning.

Bella folded her arms behind her head, rumpling her sexy hair, raising the minute skirt of her negligee. "Are you sorely vexed, Edward?"

Hell, now she was talking my language! "No, love, I'd say what I'm feeling is more akin to provoked."

"Holy Crow, Lighten up, Edward!"

Another flinty glower-cum-stare found my wife sort of apologizing, "Oh, right. I suppose it's hard to _lighten up_ when you're an immoveable mass of stone. _Wait!_ So why is it you can actually float on water?"

My glare narrowed, "Just think of me as Moses, love." I smiled at the thought.

"_And here I always imagined you to have a God Complex."_

I frowned, "What was that?"

"God! You're so fucking complex!"

Now I knew she was taunting me.

Her smart mouth was arousing and never more so than when those plump pretty impudent lips were wrapped around my swelling reddening head.

She crooked her exquisite finger and beckoned me to her side. She motioned me to sit on the edge of the bed and sank to her knees on the floor. Blowing up and down my sorely tested dick, I shook as another dribble of cum blipped up out of the little mouth centered in the head.

All of my venom was concentrated in thick pulsing ribbons of veins that lashed up and down my cock. Bella sucked and licked every single one. Ignoring my engorged almost exploding bright carmine head!

"Bella, please stop toying with my _caballeros!_"

"You know, your speech is a bit outmoded, baby. And you're such an SME."

I tapped my cock against her lips; I'd show her a _Subject Matter Expert_, and she opened with these words lilting like flames over the tough ridge and crushed velvet skin of the most vulnerable area just below the rim, "Of course, _Sir_, you were born at the turn of the previous century."

She pursed those fucking splendid lips right over me, sucking down not even to the pucker and pleat that had me almost crying in need for her taste! Her tongue swiped a kiss from my leaking top, and she pulled away to lollipop me from top to bottom, still avoiding swallowing my head and touching the creased, crumpled chenille flesh that trembled with desire!

I smoothed the back of her head gently and bit the air with a clash of my teeth.

Bella lipped my burgeoning bursting head temptingly again, "Baby, you want me to quit teasing your _junk_?"

"Please, yes, _please. _Just give it a KWSTA!_"_

Bella took as much as she could, in that position, into her mouth, binding both hands in a pumping action around the space of my cock she couldn't cover with her _kiss with serious tongue action._ Saliva dripped all over me as she _bobbed_ up and down thrice before coming up for air, "AYC, _husband_." Her lips were swollen over the words: _Aren't You Clever._

Oh shit! Who'd have thought dirty text lingo could be so hot?

I growled and she…_RAWR'ed_ right back at me.

The woman was far too _affriolante_ for her own good.

Hastily trawling Bella up my body so every single sweltering bit of her squashed against me from tits to tummy, pussy to thighs, I laid us side by side and dropped low, skating the surface of her _bouche_ with my erection. I held her head in my hands so she couldn't look away. I skimmed against her two more times and then glided up through her minge with a languorous revolution of my cock and pelvis.

One leg over my hip, her breasts suctioning to my chest, our abdomens meeting and parting, I reeled away and spun back in, in the slowest most maddening motion known to man or vampire.

Our harsh breathing bracketed the muggy air with incomprehensible words. I was too fucking far gone to even chastise Bella for her inarticulateness.

I neither increased my thrusts nor slowed but kept a steady rhythm in and out. It was bodily heaven!

Bella came twice, solemnly swearing underbreath to neither, "MEGO," or, "RMETTH."

I'd never feel the physical exertion, but my GOD!, my dick was so fucking huge it felt like a rocket about to take off!

Winding my arms around her back, Bella and I were close as could be as a rumble ripped from my chest with a true roar and my venom shot forth in steady endless streams instead of countable spurts! I'd gone for the hat-trick; no eyes rolling, screaming my name, and looking at me while we came simultaneously!

And true to her word, she hadn't allowed her Eyes to Glaze Over nor had she Rolled her Eyes to the Heavens.

Her walls continued to milk and grip me for several long minutes.

_~~ll~~_

This was our final day.

Bella had exited the shower midmorning finding me rummaging through her suitcase. "What are you doing, dear?"

I shuffled my feet and quickly folded all the clothes I'd inspected, "Er, just, um…_shit._ Bella, you're not still shopping for clothes at Target, are you?"

Sauntering with a dip-sway of her hips, Bella dropped her towel and raised a brow, "Maybe so, maybe not. I hate to break it to you, Edward, but some of the higher end designers actually have clothing collections at Target. Plus, prudent wealth management demands I watch my pennies for my golden years."

_Oh the horror!_

After much thought and deliberation, in the end there were three things I'd decided I could live with. Target was one. Text speak another. Lube was a necessary addition in a pinch. But Bella growing old? _No_.

We were in the kitchen when the maid intruded once again.

Ignoring me completely, much to my consternation, María Concepción addressed Bella wholly and familiarly, "_Pero si él es un vampiro! Qué no tiene cabeza niña? Qué tal si queda preñada? No le enseñaron que al diablo lo que es del diablo y a Dios lo que es de Dios? Chupasangres y personas son como el agua y el aceite, no se mezclan niña!. Dios la ampare y favorezca!_"

I effortlessly translated her epic diatribe: _But he is a vampire. Are you wrong in your head, child? What if you get pregnant? Didn't they teach you to give to the devil what is the devil's and to God what is God's? __Bloodsuckers__ and people are like water and oil, they do not mix girl. God help you!_

I interjected, with French, _"J'essaie de bosser putain!"_

Bella spat her Eggs Benedict everywhere at my outburst! _What?_ I _was_ trying to fucking work here.

Wiping her mouth and the table, Bella turned to María Concepción and explained in perfect Spanish as if speaking to someone of her own station, "_Ignóralo María, a veces actua como un imbécil mojigato. Gracias por preocuparte por mí, se bien que es un vampiro, y que tira puro aire, al menos eso espero!_"

_Huh?_ First of all, _sanctimonious jerk sometimes?_ At least she continued with a clarification that she was well aware of my immortal nature, and a hope that I was shooting blanks. I'd had my ejaculate tested for more than just protein value so I could attest to that!

Bella blushed as the maid left the house for the final time. "Spanish, Bella?" She's surpassed all my expectations!

Unblinkingly, she stared at me. _Of course. I didn't know everything about her as her mind was an insurmountable forcefield._ As she continued to meet my gaze, I envisioned Bella as my eternal mate; she had the stony glower down to a 't' and nary a muscle twitched while she lifted another forkful of wobbly yolk and Canadian bacon covered in Hollandaise sauce to her mouth…_now that was HOT!_

"Bella-love, I'm sorry to interrupt your breakfast again, but about the eggs. How can you savor them so much and still be less than thrilled about my own cum?"

"Edward, darling, eggs are smooth and creamy. Your non-sperm is a bit more lumpy, honey. It's nothing against you."

I remained mildly disturbed by her Eggs Benedict-cum-cum comparison.

"I know you detest the term pigs-in-a-blanket, so what if I just called it _bubble and squeak?_"

A vein bulged in my forehead, and I was silenced.

"Are you having an SM, Edward?"

_A Senior Moment?_ Oh hell no!

I took Bella's cleared plate to the sink, poured her another Mimosa. She'd acquired quite the taste for expensive champagne after our lavish, speedy reception and I couldn't complain as it loosened Bella up nicely.

Yesterday morning it'd been a Buck's Fizz; an odious concoction of OJ and champagne. With my jizz as a chaser. Well, it was remotely better than the Orange Julius reference of old, so I let it slide.

Just like my sap down her throat as I stood before her now, my jeans open, my dick up and down and in and out of her mouth, at just the exact angle so she could deep throat me accurately.

Hitting the back of her throat, she relaxed and let me trespass further. I groaned and growled and howled and bit my lips, clenched my jaw, opened my mouth to punctuated hisses.

This time I lost count.

She welcomed it all!

Grabbing Bella's arms, I brought her up to me. "How was that, Edward?"

I kissed her frantically. Tasting myself in her mouth, and it really was a pleasant flavor, I meshed, "Perfect, Bella. _Je t'aime._"

Even sampling my spurge on her lips, I continued to gnaw over my anxiety that Bella needed to be immortal like me; preferably before she aged much more.

Embracing her, I nipped the most thrumming artery within her neck, my mouth opened and my teeth wet.

"Bella, have you ever thought about becoming a vampire?" No sleeping, endless fucking, no bruises and no need to hold back…_no eating_! No nightmares…no menstruation-provoked tantrums. Win, win, win!

"_Jesus H., Edward! Took you long enough to come up with the easy answer of Make Bella a Vampire!"_

"Come again?"

"Holy crow, Edward. I've had it up to my eyeballs with campfires!" but I knew I'd heard right this time because Bella was smiling.

Mainland here we come. I hoped to be mainlining Bella's sanguine sumptuousness soon.

Twining her luscious arms around my neck and bringing me to her face, she spoke with not an ounce of demureness, "BMOF."

_Bite Me Old Fart?_

_Oh, she didn't have to ask twice…_

_

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~Equally RAWR and RRR? Apparently that's the new LOL~

Ladies who love our precious, prissy Pedanticward, I want you to know there will be more to this. Please alert me because I'm going to start posting this under the title of _Carnal Knowledge 101_ as soon as the challenge ends.

Tee hee hee, I've noticed some of you playing 'find the prompt'. Just so you know, I don't have to actually use the word within the story as long as the feel of it is evident.

French from **RowanMoon, **Text speak and more dirty French from **Viola**, and Spanish from **BellaStjerne**.

LJ Twilight 25 Challenge Information and voting and links….honestly, I did it, on my profile!

Come to the Dead Confederates thread, ladies. It's fun! I'm posting their wedding songs tonight.

Thanks for your reviews and epic hand-holding, Rie~


	25. Sky

**The Twilight Twenty-Five  
**Prompt: 16. Sky  
Pen name: goldenmeadow  
Pairing: Edward and Bella and a little bit of everyone

Rating: M

Christ, I cannot even thank you, **Viola Cornuta,** enough. I really can't. You held my hand through many days _and nights_. You gave me everything I asked for with no questions (or only saucy impudent queries that made me laugh) and in about two minutes turn-around time. You were on-call for three months straight. I am so pleased to say Gillian is joining the Dead Confederates team as my pre-beta! Endless thanks and love unto you.

**Disclaimer**: Can't I at least own this? No? Fine. In that case, you know the drill.

Ridiculously epic A/N at the bottom.

~~The Grande Finale. Plea to Worship and Crave to the Sky~~

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**Sky**

Circa 1918 to 2005

Chicago, Milwaukee, Forks

Edward

When I awoke, I fully expected to see the sky outside the gable window of my bedroom. I should have known better when there was no lasting impression of my nightly visitor inside the safe-keeping of my mind.

There was no sunrise, there was no eventide, only windows covered by heavy velvet curtains pulled-to denying the sun's entrance to the dark paneled study-made-hospital room. My first ragged breath found fire bursting down through my throat around my chest that felt hollow as an empty grave before incinerating with heat to my stomach!

No sky, just conflagration. And the murmur of a deep masculine voice. Through wieldy eyes I saw him. In a flash that rivaled the hunger-suck of inflammation causing a noise like a growl to climb from my cavernous body, I remembered!

My life was instantly dismembered.

The man from Swan Lake, the doctor from the ward, the creature who had delivered news of my mother and father's deaths with one hand and divested me of life with the incising scalpel of his teeth, this was him.

Drowning his words of explanation were my own dry sobs, my eyes were parched.

Aghast, I looked to my hands that had been wrapped tight to brow and cheeks.

"You can no longer cry, Edward."

I raged, and the howls from my body ripped an insane hunger through me, awakening lust for something I didn't understand beyond knowing _it_ needed sating now!

I tried to rip my neck to shreds to rid myself of the insatiable craving.

"You need blood, Edward."

My fight diminished, I nodded weakly. In my wary state, I thought he meant a transfusion of sorts.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

"Stay here, please, until I return."

I acquiesced. Remaining in that room, I turned to stone. My eyes didn't blink, my lungs didn't fill, my fingers didn't twitch, my legs never moved.

Catatonic.

The door opened and only my eyes lifted.

Then widened with distress!

The doctor cradled a doe in each arm as if they weighed no more than newborn babes. Jumping off the makeshift gurney in distaste, I almost knocked him over in my haste until the scent of iron, warm and rich, invaded the room.

Grabbing the minky skinned animals from his hands, I hunkered in the corner and sniffed at the creatures quizzically, my hunger exploding.

I reached in with fingers shaped like talons, pulling tendons and sinews to the side. Slick mucous and tissue didn't daunt me. I found the dying thump of a fat artery, milky violet inside its semi-opaque casing. Putting my nose flush to it, I inhaled the wet bitter smell and licked once before pointing my tongue like a dagger stabbing into the vein! Moaning, I wrapped my lips around the pulsing carotid and sucked until my cheeks caved in, and blood spilled its warmth over my chin and throat and torso.

I wasted no time with the second deer. I simply cracked her neck like a wishbone, meaty marrow spattered the bookcase beside me and violent plops of tissue showered up to my hair, caking my cheeks, making my hands reek.

I drew the dense warm liquid into my throat as fast as I could until I'd pulled an entire length of emptied vein from the eviscerated carcass with my earnestness.

Hunched over, I shoved the dead cadavers away, the racing force of their bodies shattered the far wall, carving a dent into the skirting.

My hands were bloodied, and I put them in my hair, deepening the paler red there.

Rocking, shaking, I was on the balls of my feet, my elbows to my knees, trying to make myself as small as possible. An insect. A cockroach.

"You need blood to survive, Edward."

The voice continued as if I had not just massacred two innocent does in his library.

Matter of fact, he stated, "You're strong. Supernaturally strong now."

I glanced at the impact the deer had made on plaster with barely a push from my arms.

The voice crouched before me and made as if to touch me, but I shrank back with a feral growl.

"Like me, you're immortal."

Sitting down and crossing his legs, in it for the long haul, the voice lowered and sounded suffering, "You're mother wanted this, Edward. She knew what I was."

I raised my eyes, clenched my fists, _how dare he speak of my mother!_

"Speed, strength, beauty, grace and unending life to be fed only by blood…we're vampires, Edward."

Gasping, I saw utter blackness when I closed my eyes, wishing for unconsciousness.

"One more thing," the voice whispered, eerie of tone. "You'll never sleep again."

I scrunched my eyes tight, rolled over to a ball, begged for tears, continued to breath. _You'll never sleep again._ This declaration above all the others ruined me! To not sleep meant not to dream of Isabella Swan!

Tearing through his house like a wild beast, I clawed furniture apart, shredding books, breaking every damn piece of china because it mocked me with the fact I'd never have need for it again.

I laughed maniacally.

Everything he said was true.

The blood, the stamina, the power, the insomnia, the neglect of oxygen.

_All of it was true._

Accepting his offerings of freshly killed animals, I devoured the carrion.

I was a beast, I didn't even speak to him. Not for six months.

Hearing his thoughts made me want to rip my ears off though; I imagined with my vigor I could probably do just that if I really had mind to. Anxious and worried, _the voice's_ guilt was insidious, scrabbling through him from the inside out.

At first I enjoyed his affliction as it befitted a murderer.

Not only had he stolen my life, he'd erased the memories of my mother and father. As if he'd taken cloth to the markings on a blackboard, he made the faces of my parents watery, warped as though rippled upon the surface of Lake Michigan.

All of my human years sped away so quickly!

Yet every minute here marched at a tortoise's pace.

The one visage remaining true and clear and bright, at least at first, was Isabella Swan, as though she was linked to me in this existence as well as that of my mortal years.

I could only hope while I stormed and razed and hated.

Crawling like nothing more than a mongrel towards a piece of heavy linen paper floating in ever widening spirals to the trunched up rug, dis-housed from his portfolio after my latest rampage, I scoured the refuse for a pen. Isabella had abounded in my dreams, as a human. I had those no more. She was fading too. Furiously unleashed, I sketched her face and form, black to white so she was living in front of me in less than a minute.

Finding another and another page, I traded pen for carbon and began to take my time, shading in her almond eyes, pointing out the scatter of pale freckles atop her cheeks and straight nose. In chiaroscuro, I told of her little widow's peak, the feminine dimple in her chin, the arch of her eyebrows and the height of her brow. Pressing hard and lifting up, I recreated her wavy brown hair, loosened from its hold, as I remembered it wafting over my arms. A cameo at the neck of her high ruffled blouse, slim shoulders lifting in query, eyes dancing in forthrightness, the rounds of her earring studs twinkling of precious metal.

Bent over the drawing, I revered her, placed my palm to her face. He found me there, on the floor with scattered drawings all around.

I shut out his thoughts and listened to his question, "This is Isabella Swan?"

A fresh startle lifted out my voice, sounding unused and unduly irate, "How do you know her?"

He leaned away, sat to a chair, pulled it close, elbows to knees as I'd been before him, cagey in front of the savage animal who finally spoke, "When you died, _when I took your life, Edward,_ for a moment your mind opened to me. I heard her name; I know you saw her at that last instant. Who is she?"

I observed his gentile stature, his obeisant posture, hands open, eyes honest. I looked down to the young woman and told her secret for the first time, "I knew her in my sleep alone."

With dread and sadness, what was once green and now complete tones of golden yellow saw the ache in his echoing eyes, "For everything, I'm sorry, Edward."

Stooping, he patted my shoulder, the only awkwardness in the motion from the fact that he wanted to embrace me. Standing, he left me to my work, closing the door, granting me privacy.

Acceptance then was to be mine, after half a year that felt like a damned eternity.

The voice had a name, and one I'd been familiar with secondhand; Doctor Carlisle Cullen. The voice, Carlisle, possessed a kindness of spirit that would never replace the humanity I vaguely remembered, but that affected me, finally, nonetheless.

With surety, proficiency and grace, Carlisle guided me as a sire into this new world. Steeped in confidence, innate paternal instincts, a warmth of nature that his frigidity would never eclipse, he fathered me as a young man to be respected and reared carefully.

He was hospitable; he made his house my own. Through my berserking, he's said not one word, but merely, nightly, cleaned up after me.

Learned and nurturing, Carlisle was patience itself. But never was he a mother, never could he be the woman I longed for.

I studied after him. Painting and sketching filled in the non-stop time. There was friendship and fostering and care. And always I looked to Isabella to find me.

Promising to never change another, Carlisle walked about bearing the rash of my eternal vampire life like a thorn crown on his blond head and Roman nails through his palms and feet.

The culpability within him only lightening with our every conspiring on Isabella.

His disavowel to bring any other into our world was pure, but it was in the workings of the universe itself, and no one, man nor beast, could cease this motion once put in place.

I could only help it along.

In Milwaukee, 1921, _his woman_ was here.

I knew the moment he saw her, the second he touched her. Her life, an abridged version like mine, was coming to a close. Her baby would die. There was no way I could stop that inescapability, but a few words could bring them both completion.

Esme Snider.

Pacing his den, Carlisle wondered irritably where the young woman had been those last mornings during his walks to the hospital.

I knew she was being wheeled into the infirmary, her heart malfunctioning, her body giving way, her back completely distorted.

Pounding the stairs, I demanded of Carlisle, "You must go to the clinic now!"

Hours passed. I laid out all the implements I remembered with blinded eyes.

When he entered, the back door crashing on its hinges, I left the house. I wasn't stout enough to relive the nightmare.

I'd done what I could.

Even in the forest, when she woke, I could hear the blood-curdling screams.

It took her much less time than me.

Guardedly I observed this young mother who'd been robbed of her bairn as she glided, not quite effortlessly but no less imperially, from womanhood to vampirehood.

Esme retained a maternal effervescence, a need to cherish and encourage and love. Affectionate and open and kindhearted, I gave my adoration to her quickly.

As did Carlisle, though he tried to barricade himself with books and work. He obstinately, endearingly ignored the real and close, lifelong and intimate love beneath his own Patrician nose.

I understood he had no say in the matter.

Reaching out to me, Esme and I had many commonalities; motherless to childless, an equal devotion to Carlisle. A love of the arts. A keen sense of home.

Succor was what she gifted. I was inspired to play again, but one more thing to fill out my days and nights.

I was entertained by the manner in which Esme made a conquest of Carlisle. Amusingly, this centurion willfully disregarded her advances until Esme. a sensually enlivened female, conquered him with something so simple as a bath!

Those first years, I had hope; a father in Carlisle, a mother in Esme and a future in Isabella Swan.

Nine years was a long time to wait. Being the bachelor, untouched as a man and unaffected as a vampire, while Esme and Carlisle fell more deeply in love, exploring all their awakened carnal instincts, carved another void inside me. Rebellion lashed through me and, with vigilantism my excuse to cave into my despotic craving for mortal blood, I left. A loner, I killed. A monster, I drank.

My eyes a hemorrhagic miasma, my mutated nature raged like an uncontrollable fever.

If I didn't have a soul, why did I suffer from guilt for all the unrighteous lives I took?

I went back because this paltry existence without any love at all was morbidly terrifying.

The clan grew. Rosalie in 1933, then Emmett in 1935. They too paired up.

I looked for Isabella in every female face and figure. I scoured photographs in newspapers and magazines.

Estrangement was the only thing to be found.

1936 found us in Forks, Washington. The damp drear place buckled a thick band around me with its gloomy call. She was not there either.

Progressing to watercolors and pastels, their colors were the only soft hues in my world that was gray and bleak. I gave a rosy bloom to her cheeks, a pink tint to her pretty lips, a deep brown to her well-shaped eyes.

My fingers stained, my clothes splattered, I met our next two family members in 1950; Jasper and Alice. Also coupled.

Whenever I felt my mood shift away from loneliness and brighten from melancholy, I silently pleaded with Jasper to leave me alone to my anguish. Whenever Alice traipsed into a room trailing gleeful visions, optimism enlivened me! Perhaps she'd seen my girl in her prophetic machinations. Every shake of her head was a denial that dashed the last vestiges of my faith.

Inevitably, eras changed. Unstoppably I watched each second passing, seasoned in maddening inertia. Fashions altered, new music genres were born, presidents were inaugurated, assassinated, impeached. World War II, the Vietnam War, the Cold War. Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. New weapons, new greed, new patriotism.

I alone was frozen solid, unmoving, stuck in an ice age and faltering.

My beauty to human women was evidenced by repellant, fatuous ideas. Decades on and those images of me with them, nakedly writhing, were replaced by trepidation. My supernatural attractiveness became muted by the corpse emptiness of my eyes and my insufferable attitude.

When our unaging verged on the obvious, we moved on. That was one more modification highlighting my intractability.

Like the sky, that endless dome that sheltered the world, I knew it to be round and all-encompassing, but like me, it seemed punctuated and flat.

Seventy-seven years was an interminable lifetime to attend amidst the love of three married couples. I alone was marred. The explicitness of their love taunted me, ghosted my body with sensual intimacy I'd never known, I felt no such urges for sex. I imbibed the blood of animals merely because the pain of starving myself was too great to witness in the horror written on Esme's face.

Seeking to soothe me, Esme held her hand to my cheek and whispered up at me, "You're a classic, Edward." Translation: _You'll never change._

"A real class act," Carlisle followed up, curling one arm around my shoulders. Meaning: _I'm so relieved you amended your ways; you've remained here with us, a prime example of our ethos._

Jasper knocked his fist to my chest, "A hard act to follow." He alone filled me with torment and guilt, for what right did I have to be so existentially pained when his formative years had been filled with untold massacres of innocents, and he'd overcome that goriness?

Emmett put his hand to his heart, his eyes to the heavens, and quoted:

_All the world's a stage,  
And all the men and women merely players;  
They have their exits and their entrances,  
And one man in his time plays many parts,  
His acts being seven ages._

A near-smile broke free of my mouth at his jesting. And then fell with the realization my seven ages should now be over with a mighty curtain call.

Rosalie intoned curiously, "Actions speak louder than words, Edward." She was right, but I'd never been given the chance to act!

Breaking the mold, hugging me tight, Alice whispered in my ear, "I've seen what you're thinking, Edward. _Please don't. She will come._"

I was jaded. It felt like my eulogy had been enacted.

Decade upon decade was to be filled. I was always watchful, waiting and noting. A nothing, an abyss, inconsolable. I turned into a husk of a man, a fossilized scarab, and no one wanted to know me. I scared the witless human populace with an aloofness that was much cooler than the temperature of my body.

How could I tell them I was just so forlorn? What if Isabella Swan was never real, not even as a figment in my mind? What if the only time I would ever see her was that brief moment when I was a seventeen-year-old young man, inside my bedroom, within my nocturnal wanderings?

In the old days, in the twenties, thirties, forties and fifties, Carlisle and I had still communed for many late nights over the coming of the Swan. With the eighties and then nineties I read the heavy dismay that sat over him. He no longer spoke her name to me, though it was the one _damned thing_ I needed!

Eighty-seven years was hell.

Oils now were what I worked with, heavy with thick visual brushstrokes and the stink of turpentine overshadowing the viscous greasiness of linseed oil. Dripping rich colors bespeaking the darkness niggling and worming through my entrails.

Crumbling like flakes of paint on palettes whose colors bled together, a most morose idea came to me: _If she did exist, if she did find me, would Isabella be human? I'd never delved that conundrum before! Yet, I knew, _I thought_, that she had been mortal and would remain so. Why would_ _a woman not of my breed want me?_

Shadowy midnight hours found me bivouacked in the corner of my room, rocking, keening silently just as I had upon waking as a vampire.

Eighty seven years and I was tempted to end my life by the only means possible, at the hands of the Volturi, the royal peacekeepers of the vampire nation. Perhaps, if I believed in my soul, I would have been courageous enough, as Eliza and Edward would be there waiting.

It was called euthanasia now. I preferred the succinctness of suicide, for that's what it would be.

I wore my mother's ring on a long chain, close to the heart she'd given away. I'd forgiven her the moment I'd claimed Carlisle as my father.

Hopeless and foundering, I infected the lives of my brothers and sisters, my mother and father. Just as diseased now as I had been when influenza had made grotesque mess of Edward and Eliza Masen as well as myself…_I was Typhoid Mary._

One morning in the winter of 2005, back residing in Forks, I growled and then laughed insanely at my reflection in the mirror. My clothing looked like I'd been to a London haberdasher; I stuck out like a sore thumb even without being a mythological nightwalker.

Trying on the vernacular of my peers while I prepared for another stultifying day at Forks High, I muttered, "Well, this sucks."

Alice saw it first. Meeting me at the bottom tread of the staircase, she turned to powder and vapor before my eyes and then recited the most recent Paris fashions, complete with details of trim, heights of heels, gold, silver or beaded accessories, effectively angering and emboldening me.

Blocking my advance to the door, she gated it with her wee powerful body while negating me access to her thoughts, "Don't go to school, Edward. _Please_, I'm begging you, don't go!"

Questioning my sister, I stamped back and forth in the foyer, knowing I could outrun her if I really wanted to; I needed to understand the reason for her odd reaction.

As if she had a migraine, she brought her hands to her scalp and her eyes cringed shut, "Bella Swan."

_Bella Swan?_

_Isabella Swan?_

_My Isabella!_

I had no choice.

Nothing could have kept me away!

Racing to the high school, I swung into my allotted space with precision. _She's come to me! Through the leagues of time, Isabella…no, Bella Swan!_ My equanimity dissembled as I scoured the pathetic minds of the student body, looking for my one.

I heard her name spoken and they referred to her as Isabella, just as I'd done for almost a century. But I had insider information, and I knew her preferred appellation.

A spark of long hair, a sway of hips here and there, a bashful laugh and a chagrined look, I leapt from mind to mind as if jumping over stepping stones in my pursuit of Bella.

She was always one step ahead.

_No, no, no, not her!_

The bell rang for first period. Alice caught up with me and tried to tow me back to my car. Jasper stood aside while I struggled, Emmett thought, "_I've got your back, bro."_ Rosalie spit mutely, _"I wash my hands of this."_

"ALICE!" My bellowing voice shook the tarmac like thunder and near-shattered the windshields of the pickups in our vicinity. Through clenched snapping teeth I teetered on the edge of lunacy, "Let. Me. Go."

I sped to Biology with my siblings forming a barrier around me. Since when did I need bodyguards?

The scent hit me before I even opened the door.

I cracked the plexiglass with my fists and fell to the floor. My eyes wild, my nostrils seeking more of the fragrance that crammed me with a yearning for blood so deep it sat inside my very spirit, jeering at me, ridiculing me like Lucifer. Half of me scrabbled with the door knob, and the other half wanted to crawl back down the hallway between the drab lockers, to run to the other side of the world, to find a black cave empty of all light, so I would never be tempted by _her_ luscious lovely pure quintessentially tantalizing aroma again!

_Bella Swan was my cantante. _My song, my _chanson._

Standing slowly, I buttressed myself and beseeched, "Please, let me try. Alice?"

She nodded, and they all let me go.

Opening the portal, I staggered beneath her luxurious bouquet. Stumbling, I made it to my lab table where she sat on a high stool.

I couldn't look at her. Not yet.

Seated, I watched Mr. Banner. Pitching forward, I trapped my fingers in my hair and denied the potent murderous intent that topped up the formerly empty vessel of my body.

I stopped breathing altogether, it was the only defense mechanism I had. Desiring to stare at my vision brought to life, I instead looked to the small glass square in the door finding four pairs of liquid metal eyes looking back at me. Like taking a sip of vintage wine, I supped sidelong glances at my swan.

Fine and flushed with blood.

I pinched my nose shut at the bridge. Lowered my eyes to the black tabletop.

How utterly appalling, this killing instinct enlivened for the one woman who had inspired hope for almost one hundred years! In love with a figment I now wanted nothing more than to slay, even while I yearned with beating passion to know her, save and protect her, make her body mine instead of her blood. Wonderment to lethal intentions and eroticisms all roiled inside me as I sat in this nondescript schoolroom, a laboratory full of teenagers and the young woman who'd first enthralled me in 1918.

_All these years, waiting._

It could have been no different. I should have been prepared. She was the epitome of life and death and wanting to kill and needing to love.

_A cosmic joke._

Quietly sitting next to me was my _one._ The waved curtain of her hair secluded her. I wanted at once to pull the tresses over her shoulder and slice her throat with my teeth and tickle her perfect waist with my touch.

Ironically, this all made sense. My singer was my vision, the only woman I'd ever loved yanked lust and leviathan homicidal tendencies out of me. Forks, _of course_. For, had I not felt a taut, staunch link to this town seventy years earlier? And now, I was immune to her mind. Blank as the chalkboard behind our teacher, her thoughts erased.

All the things I'd never known were wrapped up like a devious, deliciously pure and lovely present in the singular woman I'd always aspired to meet.

She moved with human poise away from me when the bell tolled, beckoning us students to our next class.

I fell to the table and stilled. Breathing again, ingesting the last samples of her smell.

I'd done it. I'd managed.

I understood.

Nothing was simple. Love was bargained for.

I had a choice. I wouldn't be waylaid by my gut-deep wildness. Overcoming the loathsome gluttony of my thirst, I'd talk to her tomorrow.

I felt stronger than I had in years. Meeting my siblings in the hallway, I even smiled.

Their claps were singularly the best thing I'd ever heard.

Until I found her voice.

It pushed me to my knees, her light translucent mellifluous and slightly husky tone.

Staying away from Bella the rest of the day, I went home and lay on my sofa and believed.

Pain beyond measure made me fold into myself again the next day, but my desire for her heart was stronger than my starvation for her sanguinity. _I felt._

It was either Bella Swan or the death of us both.

I chose life.

I chose love.

I spat on death.

I'd take it slow, I'd tell her everything, _I'd probably overwhelm her_. The shape of a grin sliding up my lips was foreign, splendid.

Week two and I was ready.

Though in ignoring her, I had a lot to make up for.

I found charm and smiles I never knew I had. They came effortlessly for her, and she welcomed my attentions, after a first snit that was decidedly endearing, in keeping with her obstinacy, and completely just.

We shook hands, and I almost dropped off my stool!

Venom filled my mouth like saliva, not for blood, but for her caress.

I yearned to feel that heavy chestnut hair sliding between my fingers as I pressed against her delicious mouth, a slightly more lively pink than I'd reckoned, to feel the heft of her small round breasts held up by my hands alone, fingertips striding up to test nipples. Clothed in the fashions of her contemporaries meant little was left to my imagination, and I squandered not an ounce of observation taking in her bottom shaped like a heart, her legs so long and slim I envisioned around my hips, her waist high and little. Bella's skin would be hot, soft, and smooth…_oh to hold her in my arms!_

A physical reaction, for the first time since I'd masturbated to hallucinations of her in Chicago, 1918, a young man about to be sent to war, my groin jerked with wanton need just as my weightless heart pulsed with broiling love. I was unschooled in how to contain this covetousness as much as the bloodlust pounding through my vitals!

I shifted slightly away, but held her hand nonetheless and questioned her lowly so as not to attract Banner's attention. Our fingers tangled and stroked, an impropriety I couldn't deny.

Not once did she shrink back, her answers were plainspoken. Her compelling reaction heartened me!

"Bella, I know this is a bit forward, but would you care to study with me this evening?" I smiled and that lifting was becoming more and more usual. My eyes leapt to hers, my legs quaked…_what if she said no?_

She said yes!

I shooed everyone away to far rooms of the house when her knock sounded.

I lived inside her words, "Good evening, Edward. Thank you for inviting me."

Relieving her of her coat, I ushered Bella up the stairs.

She turned on the landing and cajoled, "You know, you do have a lot to make up for. You were less than a pleasant lab partner my first week."

I chuckled. Flustered, I ran my hands up and down her bare arms, saturated in her warmth and ripeness, "I'm sorry, Bella, I have my reasons," I hushed against the swarthy twine of her locks, just beneath her ear.

At the door of my room, I realized my mistake.

_Why hadn't Alice reminded me?_

With no recourse, I ushered Bella in, her hand still braided with mine.

The haunting acoustic ruminations of Ray LaMontagne clouded my bedroom. _Can you see the wise man simply living, loving quietly, every breath he takes eternity, till the sun turns black..._

Releasing her, I watched her walk around my bedroom.

I sank against the wall and waited retribution.

Sketches of her spilled over every surface. Paintings, pastels, pointillism, line drawings. Almost one hundred years of Bella was everywhere to be seen.

Her fingers lingered, her eyes widened and deepened to dark brown and queried silently.

I couldn't look her in the face.

Inspecting the images more closely on her second pass, Bella took note of the diverse materials, and I saw her stroke her fingers across the dates at the bottom right corner of each piece.

Perception like earthen quartz crystal lit her eyes as she came back to me, her hands rummaging up my body as they had through the canvases and boards and thick papers, "It's me."

Her mouth was so close. She hadn't run screaming. I leant down and pulled just her lips into mine, mumbling against heat and wet, "It's you."

With her fingers on my neck and mine like melted iron to her dainty hips, pressing her up to me more strongly, Bella nipped once, twice, thrice against my mouth. Groaning, I ran a hand to her rear and my purchase there was needy and dear. Our tongues touched innocently, our hips moved around each other, at first tentatively before inimitable yearning crossed over us like ribbons of silk robbing me of breath and sense. Her breasts sweltered fully against me to an earthly feeling of such utter softness and sensuousness.

My body was alive as my mind.

With a gasp, Bella stole back. Her palm remained to my torso where nothing beat. She rubbed like a heartbeat and kissed my jaw from one side to the other, a fiery feasting of plush humidity until I groaned lowly, and then she asked, quiet and clear and fearless, "How long, Edward?"

Raising her to me, her legs around my waist, her knees resting sideways on my hips, her heels locked atop my bum, my erection growing with a heady pulsing into her body just where all of her ardor centered, the nape of Bella's warm neck nestled in one hand, my voice thick and raw and subdued against her pillow pink mouth, "Eighty-seven years, Bella. And I would wait that long again to know you."

"It's always been you," I pursed my mouth to her shoulders, opened my lips to her bosom, brought her nipples inside my lips, lapped her belly, bringing her clothes down her body.

Every limb unveiled, every twist and arch of her shivered constellations through my body, centering in my cock.

All supple, a texture I'd never known. Arms and legs,

breasts and belly flushed and thistledown smooth. _Oh, god, her back!_ The length of it, sweet and straight, knew the path of my cool hands, my fingers lingering in hollows, the dips, the swales that made a sumptuous fruitful boundary to her buttocks. Sitting on my knees, sinking to my heels, I stared. Curving in, her waist was completely womanly. I made my fingers fit into the slopes. I curled my palms around her hips, like bowls, I held her bottom rounds in my hands and placed a long kiss to the base of her spine.

My paintings could never compare.

How much I'd missed!

_"It's us_," Bella's smoky words, no more than a sigh as she braced her hands on my shoulders, floated into my inexpert adulation.

I stood. She stepped back. I wondered, and smiled and replenished my century's deadened sight with the full gorgeous nudity of her milk and rosebud skin. She hefted her breasts beneath an arm, not concealing them..._offering them._ And she came closer again.

They were buds of silk, the nipples more vibrant and erect. Minute goosebumps surrounded the palest pink areolas when I breathed and then lapped and then sucked.

My cheeks rasped her cleavage while I licked up and down and side to side, down to her navel, over the points of her hips that tasted like a promise of eight decades about to make me a man, I whispered, "It's us."

Down to the floor in front of me, Bella lowered, every motion filled with eroticism. Strumming against my mouth and then sinking her tongue deep inside, stroking my inner cheeks and slipping, satin, against mine, she found my untouched skin. Inside my trousers, the buttons undone, the buckle laying hastily sideways and clanking open, fingers pointed down, she worked under the waistbands and reached me quickly. Cold and hard, tall and rigid, I hissed when she lilted her fingers up and down lightly, figuring my length, my velvetiness, "_So…oh, Edward!"_ Her cheeks were bright and her mouth open, like mine, her eyes almost completed by her pupils, the brown irises disappearing, "_Cold, hot…hard. Oooh, but so so…silky."_

Strengthening, Bella made my shaft her own with her fingers linked together after she wet them between her legs with her tangent arousal; liquid and heat and running over me as I shook and every muscle inside me topped up to the surface with rigidity!

I hauled my clothes away so I was naked as her.

My chest knew caresses. Fondling the metallic links of the chain that circled my neck, Bella took up the ring I'd made a pendant and kissed it before placing it aside, "Your mother's ring."

My heart soared!

She touched every sinew until I was toughened inside and out by the strain of exquisite awakening. The insides of my elbows to her mouth, my armpits and every centimeter of my throat to her lips. Around my back she moved languorously, clasping my ass. Pliant tits pressed into my shoulders and I moaned. Her arms beneath mine, Bella reached around, sliding her hands from my tensed ribs to the hair below my belly button, tangling and jerking it up. She skipped my cock, rained fingertips to the trembling flesh of behind my knees. Ascending my thighs, in between so my breath was spatters like rain slashing a windshield, Bella held my balls and bent forward to place those fast learning fingers on my shaft.

I jumped and jolted and cried out with such insurmountable hunger!

I stole her over me, her weight like feathers, her grace incomparable. I sat with her on my lap, her legs opening on either side of me, bending up at the knees in readiness. Palms to the floor, her ass and racy wetness against my cock.

I made certain first, the shakiness in my tummy tautening up my entire frame, "Bella, I want to make love with you."

Nodding her head, her lips curved up and she breathed, "Yes."

As soon as I clenched her hips, she arced, her breasts rising high. The most stunning sight I'd ever seen! One forearm locked behind her back, one to her waist, I burrowed slowly inside. _Oh hell! There was nothing…there was nothing like this._ With just my head inside, she clamped down, a vice of fire and juiciness.

I bit down on my lip and only unleashed it to assure, "I'll go slowly, my love."

Her face was craven with need.

A mirror of mine. A vision I'd witnessed once in my adolescent dreams.

Little lunges while I beat back savagery. Sensually, with all the gentleness I could muster, I made way inside of her virgin body with my own.

A slight tear, her mouth forming an 'O' and the twist on her face caused me to halt. I waited and tenderly rounded her clitoris until her hips started to sway.

The smile on my mouth was hard with desire to move.

"Alright?"

"_Yes."_

My hands formed a seat to lift her rear. Her legs shifted against me heightening all of my senses. Slick heat ran against me inside her tightness.

My back curled forward, hers ratcheted backward, my neck pounded to the side. and we both gasped as I tugged her down onto me!

My eyes were wide and young and amazed!

Her motions on top of me burnished my cock lightened my spirit.

The intense red of her swollen shell slid up and down my erection. _Up and down_. Over and over with my hands settling to her hips, her waist, switching to her breasts that tippled over my mouth.

Steeped in something so corporeal and completely out of body.

I nuzzled her neck, took her nipples to my lips, made them long and bright and delicious.

Euphoria of the flesh, the soul!

All I felt was the blaze of her. Over my body, touching my muscles with her fingers digging to my stomach, goring my ribs, pushing into my navel, stroking down the line of hair that led to my penis plunging in and out of her passage.

Her face to my shoulder where she bit helplessly, my teeth to her ear where I moaned penuriously, slicking into Bella, wishing I'd been able to stave my longing enough to bring her to bed.

I enfolded her and laid her back onto the floor instead.

While I leaned up and put my palms to the rug, she gyrated down and lapped my chest, my nipples, my armpits and the shivery skin hollowed from my elbows and wrists. Twisting below me, her hands cupped my bum and pulled a harder thrust out of me.

"Please, _fuck please, Bella._ If you don't stop, this will be all over!" I frowned at the expletive that exploded from my throat and grated and knew I couldn't halt the orgasm rippling from my sac up through my shaft with shivery waves that made collapsing sluices of my venom filled veins.

Each stroke in and every lunge out bred sounds that I'd never thought I'd hear. Gasping held my name sacrosanct, enveloping made a liquid home for my cock.

Arching her back, whipping up with her hips, Bella became a rainbow below me, a bowed arc, beating up, scraping my chest with her nipples and raking my musculature with nails that would never score me!

I held her buttocks to me, made her still, felt the striations of her whimpers and pleading into my shoulder. Diving in and out, licking the deep damp line of her cleavage, I brought her hard up to me, swung down fast into her, and felt the pulse-beat of our orgasms illumining the world and detonating my past!

Sweaty, wet and tired, Bella curled around me. Laughing softly, knowing love and closeness, I bore her up and wrapped her in my skin and soft blankets, billeting her in my soul.

I kissed her heartbeat, her wrist. She nuzzled my elbow, held my still hard penis with a lax hand and cupped my bottom with the other.

A leg lifted, one plied between. Arms wound. Sighs lifted and lowered with sleepy breaths and loving words.

Dearly, chanting, enchanting, "Nearly a century?"

Happily, infatuated, forever, "Yes."

Her palm cradled my face, and simply she said, "I have known you too." Bella's eyes were hazy now with slumber and repletion. Her body enwrapped me.

I swallowed back a lifetime of emotion. I let loose my untiring vigilance. I could hold her. _I could hold Bella forever._

From tragedy and solitude to solace, and the beginning.

_My soul was returned to me.._

~_ Commencer~_

_

* * *

  
_

~So, this is only the beginning~

**Rie:**

Even though Mirror and Vivid own me, this is innocence and rebirth, opening curtain on our last night with The Men of Twilight. To me, to Vi, this is _everything_ and _everyone_. And just the start of things to come.

**Gillian:**.

Prompt etomology:

c.1340, from . prompt (1219), from L. promptus "brought forth, at hand, ready, quick," prop. pp. of promere "to bring forth," from pro- "forward" + emere "to take" (see exempt). Theatrical sense of "to assist a speaker with lines" is first recorded 1428. The adj. is first recorded 1432.

Twenty-five prompts, three months

Thank you Rie, you are my Quicksilver Girl

_She's a quicksilver girl_

_A lover of the world_

_She spreads her wings_

_And she's free_

**Jaques:**  
_All the world's a stage,  
And all the men and women merely players;  
They have their exits and their entrances,  
And one man in his time plays many parts,  
His acts being seven ages._

_As You Like It Act 2, scene 7, 139–143_

Many thanks to everyone who read and more specifically to all of you babes who reviewed every one of these! I know who you are, and you honor me with your love.

To the ladies who gave me ideas: Vi, Char, Christie,Tor,

biggest fucking thanks ever.

Always, my heart belongs to the devoted Dead Thread gals: Mer, Kari, Ape, Kat, Amanda, Jenn, Liz, Robin, Margie, Vi, Tosh, Diane, V. Special ta to Claudia…you tell me in wonderful words meant only for me, and I love you for it. Tracey, you pwn me?

Poll on my profile…vote for your favorite prompts; just a bit of fun y'all, because I'm sad to see these go. I've been generous, you get to choose four. Come to thread and tell me your top six!

I will be posting several of these as short stories in their own right. Alert me for, hopefully, more of the Play/Soft, Plea/Crave/Worship/Sky, Wood/Walls, Mirror/Vivid (_maybe_), and the Pedanticward series! I'll write when the muse hits me.

Voting info is now properly on my profile. I think you have two weeks. Please vote, if you enjoyed any of my stories, or anyone else's. This was a difficult but thoroughly satisfying task!

Voting for Les Femmes Noires has started. Remember blondie's and my _The Bride of Edward Cullen?_ Links on my profile.

And yes, you should be reading _Dead Confederates_, _Incarcerated_, and _Comeuppance _by yours truly.

**Thank you, lovelies, from the very depths of my heart, **

**Rie~**


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